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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Stone, by Anatole France
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The White Stone
-
-Author: Anatole France
-
-Editor: Frederic Chapman
-
-Translator: Charles E. Roche
-
-Release Date: May 31, 2015 [EBook #49092]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE STONE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
-http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
-generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
-Libraries.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
-
-  IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
-  EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN
-
-  THE WHITE STONE
-
-
-
-
-THE WHITE STONE
-
-  BY ANATOLE FRANCE
-
-  A TRANSLATION BY
-  CHARLES E. ROCHE
-
-  LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
-  NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMX
-
-  Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO, LIMITED
-  Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- CHAP.                       PAGE
-    I.                          9
-   II. GALLIO                  29
-  III.                        107
-   IV.                        147
-    V. THROUGH THE HORN
-       OR THE IVORY GATE      183
-   VI.                        237
-
-
-
-
-  Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων
-  καταδαρθέντες τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς
-  οὔσης.
-                      (Philopatris, xxi.)
-
-  And to me it seems that you have fallen asleep
-  upon a white rock, and in a parish of dreams, and
-  have dreamt all this in a moment while it was
-  night.
-
-
-
-
-THE WHITE STONE
-
-I
-
-
-A few Frenchmen, united in friendship, who were spending the spring in
-Rome, were wont to meet amid the ruins of the disinterred Forum. They
-were Joséphin Leclerc, an Embassy Attaché on leave; M. Goubin, licencié
-ès lettres, an annotator; Nicole Langelier, of the old Parisian family
-of the Langeliers, printers and classical scholars; Jean Boilly, a
-civil engineer, and Hippolyte Dufresne, a man of leisure, and a lover
-of the fine arts.
-
-Towards five o’clock of the afternoon of the first day of May, they
-wended their way, as was their custom, through the northern door,
-closed to the public, where Commendatore Boni, who superintended the
-excavations, welcomed them with quiet amenity, and led them to the
-threshold of his house of wood nestling in the shadow of laurel bushes,
-privet hedges and cytisus, and rising above the vast trench, dug down
-to the depth of the ancient Forum, in the cattle market of pontifical
-Rome.
-
-Here, they pause awhile, and look about them.
-
-Facing them rise the truncated shafts of the Columnæ Honorariæ, and
-where stood the Basilica of Julia, the eye rested on what bore the
-semblance of a huge draughts-board and its draughts. Further south, the
-three columns of the Temple of the Dioscuri cleave the azure of the
-skies with their blue-tinted volutes. On their right, surmounting the
-dilapidated Arch of Septimus Severus, the tall columns of the Temple
-of Saturn, the dwellings of Christian Rome, and the Women’s Hospital
-display in tiers, their facings yellower and muddier than the waters of
-the Tiber. To their left stands the Palatine flanked by huge red arches
-and crowned with evergreen oaks. At their feet, from hill to hill,
-among the flagstones of the Via Sacra, narrow as a village street,
-spring from the earth an agglomeration of brick walls and marble
-foundations, the remains of buildings which dotted the Forum in the
-days of Rome’s strength. Trefoil, oats, and the grasses of the field
-which the wind has sown on their lowered tops, have covered them with
-a rustic roof illumined by the crimson poppies. A mass of _débris_,
-of crumbling entablatures, a multitude of pillars and altars, an
-entanglement of steps and enclosing walls: all this indeed not stunted
-but of a serried vastness and within limits.
-
-Nicole Langelier was doubtless reviewing in his mind the host of
-monuments confined in this famed space:
-
-“These edifices of wise proportions and moderate dimensions,” he
-remarked, “were separated from one another by narrow streets full of
-shade. Here ran the _vicoli_ beloved in countries where the sun shines,
-while the generous descendants of Remus, on their return from hearing
-public speakers, found, along the walls of the temples, cool yet
-foul-smelling corners, whence the rinds of water-melons and castaway
-shells were never swept away, and where they could eat and enjoy their
-siesta. The shops skirting the square must certainly have emitted the
-pungent odour of onions, wine, fried meats, and cheese. The butchers’
-stalls were laden with meats, to the delectation of the hardy citizens,
-and it was from one of those butchers that Virginius snatched the knife
-with which he killed his daughter. There also were doubtless jewellers
-and vendors of little domestic tutelary deities, protectors of the
-hearth, the ox-stall, and the garden. The citizens’ necessaries of life
-were all centred in this spot. The market and the shops, the basilicas,
-_i.e._, the commercial Exchanges and the civil tribunals; the Curia,
-that municipal council which became the administrative power of the
-universe; the prisons, whose vaults emitted their much dreaded and
-fetid effluvia, and the temples, the altars, of the highest necessity
-to the Italians who have ever some thing to beg of the celestial powers.
-
-“Here it was, lastly, that during a long roll of centuries were
-accomplished the vulgar or strange deeds, almost ever flat and dull,
-oftentimes odious and ridiculous, at times generous, the agglomeration
-of which constitutes the august life of a people.”
-
-“What is it that one sees, in the centre of the square, fronting the
-commemorative pedestals?” inquired M. Goubin, who, primed with an
-eye-glass, had noticed a new feature in the ancient Forum, and was
-thirsting for information concerning it.
-
-Joséphin Leclerc obligingly answered him that they were the foundations
-of the recently unearthed colossal statue of Domitian.
-
-Thereupon he pointed out, one after the other, the monuments laid bare
-by Giacomo Boni in the course of his five years’ fruitful excavations:
-the fountain and the well of Juturna, under the Palatine Hill; the
-altar erected on the site of Cæsar’s funeral pile, the base of which
-spread itself at their feet, opposite the Rostra; the archaic stele and
-the legendary tomb of Romulus over which lies the black marble slab of
-the Comitium; and again, the Lacus Curtius.
-
-The sun, which had set behind the Capitol, was striking with its
-last shafts the triumphal arch of Titus on the towering Velia. The
-heavens, where to the West the pearl-white moon floated, remained as
-blue as at midday. An even, peaceful, and clear shadow spread itself
-over the silent Forum. The bronzed navvies were delving this field of
-stones, while, pursuing the work of the ancient Kings, their comrades
-turned the crank of a well, for the purpose of drawing the water which
-still forms the bed where slumbered, in the days of pious Numa, the
-reed-fringed Velabrum.
-
-They were performing their task methodically and with vigilance.
-Hippolyte Dufresne, who had for several months been a witness of their
-assiduous labour, of their intelligence and of their prompt obedience
-to orders, inquired of the director of the excavations how it was that
-he obtained such yeoman’s work from his labourers.
-
-“By leading their life,” replied Giacomo Boni. “Together with them do I
-turn over the soil; I impart to them what we are together seeking for,
-and I impress on their minds the beauty of our common work. They feel
-an interest in an enterprise the grandeur of which they apprehend but
-vaguely. I have seen their faces pale with enthusiasm when unearthing
-the tomb of Romulus. I am their everyday comrade, and if one of them
-falls ill, I take a seat at his bedside. I place as great faith in them
-as they do in me. And so it is that I boast of faithful workmen.”
-
-“Boni, my dear Boni,” exclaimed Joséphin Leclerc, “you know full well
-that I admire your labours, and that your grand discoveries fill me
-with emotion, and yet, allow me to say so, I regret the days when
-flocks grazed over the entombed Forum. A white ox, from whose massive
-head branched horns widely apart, chewed the cud in the unploughed
-field; a hind dozed at the foot of a tall column which sprang from the
-sward, and one mused: Here was debated the fate of the world. The Forum
-has been lost to poets and lovers from the day that it ceased to be the
-Campo Formio.”
-
-Jean Boilly dwelt on the value of these excavations, so methodically
-carried out, as a contribution towards a knowledge of the past. Then,
-the conversation having drifted towards the philosophy of the history
-of Rome:
-
-“The Latins,” he remarked, “displayed reason even in the matter of
-their religion. Their gods were commonplace and vulgar, but full of
-common sense and occasionally generous. If a comparison be drawn
-between this Roman Pantheon composed of soldiers, magistrates, virgins,
-and matrons and the deviltries painted on the walls of Etruscan tombs,
-reason and madness will be found in juxtaposition. The infernal scenes
-depicted in the mortuary chambers of Corneto represent the monstrous
-creations of ignorance and fear. They seem to us as grotesque as
-Orcagna’s _Day of Judgment_ in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and the
-_Dantesque Hell_ of the Campo Santo of Pisa, whereas the Latin Pantheon
-reflects for ever the image of a well-organised society. The gods of
-the Romans were like themselves, industrious and good citizens. They
-were useful deities, each one having its proper function. The very
-nymphs held civil and political offices.
-
-“Look at Juturna, whose altar at the foot of the Palatine we have so
-frequently contemplated. She did not seem fated by her birth, her
-adventures, and her misfortunes to occupy a permanent post in the
-city of Romulus. An incensed Rutula, beloved by Jupiter, who rewarded
-her with immortality, when King Turnus fell by the hand of Æneas, as
-decreed by the Fates, she flung herself into the Tiber, to escape thus
-from the light of day, since it was denied her to perish with her royal
-brother. Long did the shepherds of Latium tell the story of the living
-nymph’s lamentations from the depths of the river. In later years, the
-villagers of rural Rome, when looking down at night-time over the bank,
-imagined that they could see her by the moon’s rays, lurking in her
-glaucous garments among the rushes. The Romans, however, did not leave
-her to the idle contemplation of her sorrows. They promptly conceived
-the idea of allotting to her an important duty, and entrusted her
-with the custody of their fountains, converting her into a municipal
-goddess. And so it is with all their divinities. The Dioscuri, whose
-temple lives in its beautiful ruins, the Dioscuri, the brothers of
-Helen, the sparkling _Gemini_, were put to good use by the Romans, as
-messengers of the State. The Dioscuri it was, who, mounted on a white
-charger, brought to Rome the news of the victory of Lake Regillus.
-
-“The Italians asked of their gods only temporal and substantial
-benefits. In this respect, notwithstanding the Asiatic fears which have
-invaded Europe, their religious sentiment has not changed. That which
-they formally demanded from their gods and their genii, they nowadays
-expect from the Madonna and the Saints. Every parish possesses its
-Beatified patron, to whom requests are preferred just as in the case of
-a Deputy. There are Saints for the vine, for cereals, for cattle, for
-the colic, and for toothache. Latin imagination has repeopled Heaven
-with a multitude of living bodies, and has converted Judaic monotheism
-into a new polytheism. It has enlivened the Gospels with a copious
-mythology; it has re-established a familiar intercourse between the
-divine and the terrestrial worlds. The peasantry demand miracles of
-their protecting Saints, and hurl invectives at them if the miracle is
-slow of manifestation. The peasant who has in vain solicited a favour
-of the Bambino, returns to the chapel, and addressing on this occasion
-the Incoronata herself, exclaims:
-
-“‘I am not speaking to you, you whoreson, but to your sainted mother.’
-
-“The women make the Madre di Dio a confidant of their love affairs.
-They believe with some show of reason that being a woman she
-understands, and that there is no need to be on a footing of delicacy
-with her. They have no fear of going too far--a proof of their piety.
-Hence we must view with admiration the prayer which a fine lass of
-the Genoese Riviera addressed to the Madonna: ‘Holy Mother of God,
-who didst conceive without sin, grant me the grace of sinning without
-conceiving.’”
-
-Nicole Langelier here remarked that the religion of the Romans lent
-itself to the evolution of Rome’s policy.
-
-“Bearing the stamp of a distinctly national character,” he said, “it
-was, for all that, capable of penetrating the minds of foreign nations,
-and of winning them over by its sociable and tolerant spirit. It was an
-administrative religion propagating itself without effort together with
-the rest of the administration.”
-
-“The Romans loved war,” said M. Goubin, who studiously avoided
-paradoxes.
-
-“They loved not war for itself,” was Jean Boilly’s rejoinder. “They
-were far too reasonable for that. That military service was to them a
-hardship is revealed by certain signs. Monsieur Michel Bréal tells you
-that the word which primarily expressed the equipment of the soldier,
-_ærumna_, subsequently assumed the general meaning of lassitude, need,
-trouble, hardship, toil, pain, and distress. Those peasants were just
-as other peasants. They entered the ranks merely because compelled and
-forced thereto. Their very leaders, the wealthy proprietors, waged war
-neither for pleasure nor for glory. Previous to entering on a campaign,
-they consulted their interests twenty times over, and carefully
-computed the chances.”
-
-“True,” said M. Goubin, “but their circumstances and the state of the
-world compelled them ever to be in arms. Thus it is that they carried
-civilisation to the far ends of the known world. War is above all an
-instrument of progress.”
-
-“The Latins,” resumed Jean Boilly, “were agriculturists who waged
-agriculturists’ wars. Their ambitions were ever agricultural. They
-exacted of the vanquished, not money, but soil, the whole or part of
-the territory of the subjugated confederation, generally speaking
-one-third, out of friendship, as they said, and because they were
-moderate in their desires. The farmer came and drove his plough over
-the spot where the legionary had a short while ago planted his pike.
-The tiller of the soil confirmed the soldier’s conquests. Admirable
-soldiers, doubtless, well disciplined, patient, and brave, who fought
-and who were sometimes beaten just like any others; yet still more
-admirable peasants. If wonder is felt at their having conquered so many
-lands, still more is it to be wondered at that they should have kept
-them. The marvel of it is that in spite of the many battles they lost,
-these stubborn peasants never yielded an acre of soil, so to speak.”
-
-While this discussion was proceeding, Giacomo Boni was gazing with a
-hostile eye at the tall brick house standing to the north of the Forum
-on top of several layers of ancient substructures.
-
-“We are about,” he said, “to explore the Curia Julia. We shall soon, I
-hope, be in a position to break up the sordid building which covers its
-remains. It will not cost the State much to purchase it for the spade’s
-work. Buried under nine mètres of soil on which stands the Convent of
-S. Adriano lie the flagstones of Diocletian, who restored the Curia
-for the last time. We shall surely find among the rubbish a number
-of the marble tables on which the laws were engraved. It is a matter
-of interest to Rome, to Italy, nay to the whole world, that the last
-vestiges of the Roman Senate should see the light of day.”
-
-Thereupon he invited his friends into his hut, as hospitable and rustic
-a one as that of Evander.
-
-It constituted a single room wherein stood a deal table laden with
-black potteries and shapeless fragments giving out an earthy smell.
-
-“Prehistorical treasures!” sighed Joséphin Leclerc. “And so, my good
-Giacomo Boni, not content with seeking in the Forum the monuments of
-the Emperors, those of the Republic, and those of the Kings, you must
-fain sink down into the soil which bore flora and fauna that have
-vanished, drive your spade into the quaternary, and the tertiary,
-penetrate the pliocene, the miocene, and the eocene; from Latin
-archæology you wander to prehistoric archæology and to palæontology.
-The salons are expressing alarm at the depths to which you are
-venturing. Countess Pasolini would like to know where you intend to
-stop, and you are represented in a little satirical sheet as coming out
-at the Antipodes, breathing the words: _Adesso va bene!_”
-
-Boni seemed not to have heard.
-
-He was examining with deep attention a clay vessel still damp and
-covered with ooze. His pale blue expressive eyes darkened while
-critically examining this humble work of man for some unrevealed
-trace of a mysterious past, but resumed their natural hue as the
-Commendatore’s mind wandered off into a reverie.
-
-“These remains which you have before you,” he presently remarked,
-“these roughly hewn little wooden sarcophagi and these cinerary urns of
-black pottery and of house-like shape containing calcined bones were
-gathered under the Temple of Faustina, on the north-west side of the
-Forum.
-
-“Black urns containing ashes, and skeletons resting in their coffins
-as if in a bed, are here to be met with side by side. The funeral
-rites of the Greeks and the Romans included both those of burial and
-of cremation. Over the whole of Europe, in prehistoric days, the two
-customs were simultaneously observed, in the same city and in the same
-tribe. Does this dual fashion of sepulture correspond with the ideals
-of two races? I am inclined to believe so.”
-
-Picking up, with reverential and almost ritual gesture, an urn shaped
-like a dwelling and containing a small quantity of ashes, he went on:
-
-“The men who in immemorial times gave this form to clay, believed that
-the soul, being attached to the bones and the ashes, had need of a
-dwelling, but that it did not require a very large house wherein to
-live the abridged life of the dead. These men were of a noble race
-which came from Asia. The one whose light ashes I now hold lived before
-the days of Evander and of the shepherd Faustulus.”
-
-Then, making use of the phraseology of the ancients, he added:
-
-“Those were the days when King Vitulus, King Calf as we should say,
-held peaceful sway over this country so pregnant with glory. Monotonous
-pastoral times reigned over the Ausonian plain. These men were,
-however, neither ignorant nor boorish. Much priceless knowledge had
-come to them from their forefathers. Both the ship and the oar were
-known to them. They practised the art of subjecting oxen to the yoke
-and of harnessing them to the pole. They kindled at will the divine
-flame. They gathered salt, wrought in gold, kneaded and baked vases
-of clay. Probably too they began to till the soil. They do say that
-the Latin shepherds became agricultural labourers in the fabled days
-of the Calf. They cultivated millet, wheat, and spelt. They stitched
-skins together with needles of bone. They wove and perchance made wool
-false to its whiteness by dyeing it various colours. By the phases of
-the moon did they measure time. They gazed upon the heavens but to
-discover in them what was in the world below. They saw in them the
-greyhound who watches for Diospiter the shepherd who tends the starry
-flock. The prolific clouds were to them the Sun’s cattle, the cows
-supplying milk to the cerulean countryside. They worshipped the heavens
-as their Father, and the Earth as their Mother. At eventide, they heard
-the chariots of the gods, like themselves migratory, roll along the
-mountain roads with their ponderous wheels. They enjoyed the light of
-day and pondered with sadness over the life of the souls in the Kingdom
-of Shadows.
-
-“We know that these massive-headed Aryans were fair, since their gods,
-made to their own image, were fair. Indra had locks like ears of wheat
-and a beard as tawny as the tiger’s coat. The Greeks conceived the
-immortal gods with blue or glaucous eyes, and a head of golden hair.
-The goddess Roma was _flava et candida_:
-
-“Were it possible to make a whole out of these calcined bony fragments,
-the result would be pure Aryan forms. In those massive and vigorous
-skulls, in those heads as square as the primary Rome which their sons
-were to build, you would recognise the ancestors of the patricians of
-the Commonwealth, the long flourishing stock which produced tribunes
-of the people, pontiffs, and consuls; you would be handling the
-magnificent mould of the robust brains which constructed religion, the
-family, the army, and the public laws of the most strongly organised
-city that ever existed.”
-
-Gently placing the bit of pottery on the rustic table, Giacomo Boni
-bends over a coffin the size of a cradle, a coffin dug out of the trunk
-of an oak, and similar in shape to the early canoes of man. He lifts up
-the thin covering of bark and sap-wood forming the lid of that funeral
-wherry, and brings to light bones as frail as a bird’s skeleton. Of
-the body, there hardly remains the spinal column, and it would bear
-resemblance to one of the lowest of vertebrata, such as a big saurian,
-did not the fullness of the forehead reveal man. Coloured beads, which
-have become detached from a necklace, are scattered over these bones
-browned with age, washed by subterraneous waters, and exhumed from
-clayey soil.
-
-“Look!” says Boni, “at this little boy who was not given the honours of
-cremation, but buried, and returned as a whole to the earth whence he
-sprung. He is not a son of headmen, nor a noble inheritor of the traits
-of a fair race. He belongs to the race indigenous to the Mediterranean,
-the race which became the Roman _plebs_, and which supplies Italy to
-the present day with subtile lawyers and calculating individuals. He
-was born in the Palatine City of the Seven Hills, in days seen dimly
-through the mist of heroic fables. It is a Romulean boy. In those
-days, the Valley of the Seven Hills was a morass, and the slopes of
-the Palatine were covered with reed-thatched huts only. A tiny lance
-was placed on the coffin to show that the child was a male. He was
-barely four years old when he fell asleep in death. Then his mother
-clothed him with a beautiful tunic clasped at the neck, around which
-she fastened a string of beads. The kinsmen did not begrudge him their
-offerings. They deposited on his tomb, in urns of black earthenware,
-milk, beans, and a bunch of grapes. I have collected these vessels and
-I have fashioned similar ones out of the same clay by the heat of a
-wood fire lit in the Forum at night. Previous to taking a last farewell
-of him, they ate and drank together a portion of their offerings; this
-funeral repast assuaged their sorrow. Child, thou who sleepest since
-the days of the god Quirinus, an Empire has passed over thy agrestic
-coffin, and the same stars which shone at thy birth are about to light
-up the skies above us. The unfathomable space which separates the hours
-of your life from those of our own constitutes but an imperceptible
-moment in the life of the Universe.”
-
-After a moment’s silence, Nicole Langelier remarked:
-
-“It is as difficult to distinguish amid a people the races composing it
-as to trace in the course of a river the streams which mingle with it.
-What constitutes, moreover, a race? Do any human races really exist?
-I see white men, red men, and black men. But, they do not constitute
-races; they are merely varieties of the same race, of the same species,
-which form together fruitful unions and intermingle without ceasing.
-_A fortiori_, the man of learning knows not several yellow races or
-several white races. Human beings invent, however, races in pursuance
-of their vanity, their hatred, or their greed. In 1871, France became
-dismembered by virtue of the rights of the Germanic race, and yet no
-German race has an existence. The antiemites kindle the hatred of
-Christian peoples against the Jews, and still there is no Jewish race.
-
-“What I state on the subject, Boni, is purely speculative, and not with
-the view of running counter to your ideas. How could one not believe
-you! Conviction has its home on your lips. Moreover, you blend in your
-thoughts the profound verities of poetry with the far-spreading truths
-of science. As you truly state, the shepherds who came from Bactriana
-peopled Greece and Italy. As you again say, they found there natives
-of the soil. In ancient days, a belief shared in common by Italians
-and Hellenes was that the first men who peopled their country were
-like Erectheus, born of Mother Earth. Nor do I pretend, my dear Boni,
-that you cannot trace through the centuries the antochthones of your
-Ausonia, and the immigrants from the Pamir; the former, intelligent
-and eloquent plebeians; the latter, patricians fully impregnated with
-courage and faith. For, when all is said, if there are not, properly
-speaking, several human races, and if still less so several white
-races, our species assuredly comprises distinct varieties oftentimes
-stamped with marked characteristics. Hence there is nothing to hinder
-two or more of these varieties living for a long time side by side
-without fusing, each one preserving its individual characteristics.
-Nay, these differences may occasionally, in lieu of vanishing with the
-course of time under the action of the plastic forces of nature, on
-the contrary become accentuated more strongly through the empire of
-immutable customs, and the stress of social institutions.”
-
-“_E proprio vero_,” said Boni in a low tone, as he replaced the oaken
-lid on the coffin of the Romulean child.
-
-Then, begging his guests to be seated, he said to Nicole Langelier:
-
-“I shall now hold you to your promise, and beg you to read to us that
-story of Gallio, at which I have seen you at work in your little room
-in the _Foro Traiano_. You make Romans speak in your script. This is
-the spot to hear your narrative, here in a corner of the Forum, close
-by the Via Sacra, between the Capitol and the Palatine. Tarry not with
-your reading, so as not to be overtaken by the twilight, and lest your
-voice be quickly drowned by the cries of the birds warning one another
-of approaching night.”
-
-The guests of Giacomo Boni welcomed the foregoing utterance with a
-murmur of approval, and Nicole Langelier, without waiting for more
-pressing entreaties, unrolled a manuscript and read aloud the following
-narrative.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-GALLIO
-
-
-In the 804th year of the foundation of Rome, and the 13th of the
-principality of Claudius Cæsar, Junius Annæus Novatus was proconsul of
-Achaia. Born of a knightly family of Spanish origin, a son of Seneca
-the Rhetor and of the chaste Helvia, a brother of Annæus Mela, and of
-the famed Lucius Annæus, he bore the name of his adoptive father, the
-Rhetor Gallio, exiled by Tiberius. In his mother’s veins flowed the
-same blood as that of Cicero, and he had inherited from his father,
-together with immense wealth, a love of letters and of philosophy. He
-studied the works of the Greeks even more assiduously than those of the
-Latins. His mind was a prey to noble aspiration. He was an interested
-student of nature and of what appertains to her. The activity of his
-intelligence was so keen that he enjoyed being read to while in his
-bath, and that, even when joining in the chase, he was wont to carry
-with him his tablets of wax and his stylus. During the leisure moments
-which he managed to secure in the intervals of most serious duties and
-most important works, he wrote books on subjects relating to nature,
-and composed tragedies.
-
-His clients and his freedmen loudly proclaimed his gentleness. His was
-indeed a genial character. He had never been known to give way to a fit
-of anger. He looked upon violence as the worst and most unpardonable of
-weaknesses.
-
-All deeds of cruelty were held in execration by him, save when their
-true character escaped him owing to the consecration of custom and of
-public opinion. He frequently discovered, amid the severities rendered
-sacred by ancestral usage and sanctified by the laws, revolting
-excesses against which he raised his voice in protest, and which he
-would have attempted to sweep away, had not the interests of the State
-and the common welfare been objected from all quarters. In those days,
-conscientious magistrates and honest functionaries were not few and far
-between throughout the Empire. There were indeed a number as honest and
-as impartial as Gallio himself, but it is to be doubted whether another
-could be found so humane.
-
-Entrusted with the administration of that Greece despoiled of her
-riches, her pristine glory departed, and fallen from her freedom so
-full of life into an idle tranquillity, he remembered that she had
-formerly taught the world wisdom and the fine arts, and his treatment
-of her combined the vigilance of a guardian with the reverence of
-a son. He respected the liberties of the cities and the rights of
-individuals. He showed honour to those who were truly Greeks by birth
-and education, regretting that their numbers were sorely restricted,
-and that his authority extended for the greater part over an infamous
-rabble of Jews and Syrians; yet he remained equitable in dealing with
-these Asiatics, laying unction to his soul for what he considered a
-meritorious endeavour.
-
-He dwelt in Corinth, the richest and most densely populated city of
-Roman Greece. His villa, built in the time of Augustus, enlarged
-and embellished since then by the pro-consuls who had governed the
-province in succession, stood on the furthermost western slopes of the
-Acrocorinthus, whose foliaged summit was crowned by the Temple of Venus
-and the groves where dwelt her priests. It was a somewhat spacious
-mansion surrounded by gardens studded with bushy trees, watered by
-springs, ornamented with statues, alcoves, gymnasia, baths, libraries,
-and altars consecrated to the gods.
-
-He was strolling in it on a certain morn, according to his wont,
-with his brother Annæus Mela, discoursing on the order of nature and
-the vicissitudes of fortune. The sun was rising, hazy in its white
-splendour in the roseate heavens. The gentle undulations of the hills
-of the Isthmus concealed the Saronic shore, the Stadium, the sanctuary
-of the sports, and the eastern harbour of Cenchreæ. Between the fallow
-slopes of the Geranean range and the crimson twin-peaked Helicon, one
-could, however, obtain a glimpse of the quiescent blue waters of the
-Alcyonium Mare. In the distance, and to the north, glistened the three
-snow-capped summits of Parnassus. Gallio and Mela proceeded together
-as far as the edge of the elevated foreground. At their feet spread
-Corinth standing on an extensive plateau of pale yellow sand, and
-sloping gently towards the spumous fringe of the Gulf. The pavements of
-the forum, the columns of the basilica, the tiers of the hippodrome,
-the white steps of the porches sparkled, while the gilded roofs of the
-temples flashed dazzling rays. Vast and new, the town was intersected
-with straight-running streets. A wide road descended to the harbour of
-Lechæum, whose shore was fringed with warehouses and whose waters were
-covered with ships. To the west, the atmosphere reeked with the smoke
-of the iron-foundries, while the streams ran black from the pollution
-of the dye-houses, and on that side, forests of pine extending to the
-edge of the horizon, were lost to sight in the skies.
-
-Gradually, the town awoke from its slumbers. The strident neighing of a
-horse rent the morning calm, and soon were heard the muffled rumblings
-of wheels, shouting of waggoners, and the chanting voices of women
-selling herbs. Emerging from their hovels amid the ruins of the Palace
-of Sisyphus, aged and blind hags bearing copper vessels on their heads,
-and led by children, wended their way to draw water from the Pirene
-fountain. On the flat roofs of the houses abutting the grounds of the
-proconsul, Corinthian women were spreading linen to dry, and one of
-them was castigating her child with leek-stalks. In the hollow road
-leading to the Acropolis, a semi-nude old bronze-coloured man, prodded
-the rump of an ass laden with salad herbs and chanted between the
-stumps of his teeth and in his unkempt beard, a slave-song:
-
-     “Toil, little ass,
-      As I have toiled.
-    Much good will it do you:
-    You may be sure of it.”
-
-Meanwhile, at the sight of the town resuming its daily labour, Gallio
-fell a-musing over the earlier Corinth, the lovely Ionian city, opulent
-and joyous until the day when she witnessed the massacre of her
-citizens by the soldiery of Mummius, her women, the noble daughters of
-Sisyphus, sold at auction, her palaces and temples the prey of flames,
-her walls razed to the ground, and her riches piled away into the
-Liburnian ships of the Consul.
-
-“Hardly a century ago,” he remarked, “the work wrought by Mummius still
-stood revealed in all its horror. The shore which you see, brother
-mine, was more of a desert than the Libyan sands. The divine Julius
-rebuilt the town wrecked by our arms, and peopled it with freedmen. On
-this very strand, where the illustrious Bacchiadæ formerly revelled
-in their haughty indolence, poor and rude Latins settled, and Corinth
-entered upon a new lease of life. She grew rapidly, and realised how to
-take advantage of her position. She levies tribute on all ships which,
-whether from the East or from the West, cast anchor in her two harbours
-of Lechæum and Cenchreæ. Her population and wealth increase apace under
-the ægis of the Roman peace.
-
-“What blessings has not the Empire bestowed throughout the world! To
-the Empire is due the profound tranquillity which the countryside
-enjoys. The seas are swept of pirates, and the highways of robbers.
-From the befogged Ocean to the Permulic Gulf, from Gades to the
-Euphrates, the trading of merchandise proceeds in undisturbed security.
-The law protects the lives and property of all. Individual rights must
-not be infringed upon. Liberty has henceforth no other limits than its
-lines of defence, and is circumscribed for its own security alone.
-Justice and reason rule the world.”
-
-Unlike his two brothers, Annæus Mela had not intrigued for honours.
-Those who loved him, and their name was legion, for he was ever in his
-intercourse affable and extremely pleasant, attributed his detachment
-from public affairs to the moderation of a mind attracted by the
-blessings of tranquil obscurity, a mind which had no other care than
-the study of philosophy. But those who observed him with greater
-insight were under the impression that he was ambitious after his own
-fashion, and that like Mæcenas, he, a simple knight, was consumed with
-the envy of enjoying the same consideration as the consuls. Lastly,
-certain evil-minded individuals believed that they discerned in him the
-greed of the Senecas for the riches which they affected to despise, and
-thus did they explain to themselves that Mela had for a long time lived
-in obscurity in Betica, giving himself up entirely to the management of
-his vast estates, and that subsequently summoned to Rome by his brother
-the philosopher, he had devoted himself to the administration of the
-finances of the Empire, rather than go in the quest of high judiciary
-or military posts. His character could not be readily determined from
-his utterances, for he spoke the language of the Stoics, a language
-equally adapted for the concealment of the weaknesses of the mind and
-the revelation of the grandeur of one’s sentiments. It was in those
-days the height of elegance to utter virtuous discourse. At any rate,
-there is no doubt that Mela spoke his thoughts.
-
-He replied to his brother that, although not versed in public affairs
-like himself, he had had occasion to admire the power and wisdom of the
-Romans.
-
-“They reveal themselves,” he said, “in the most remote parts of our own
-Spain. But it is in a wild pass of the mountains of Thessaly that I
-have been made to appreciate at its highest the beneficent majesty of
-the Empire. I had come from Hypata, a town renowned for its cheeses,
-and whose women were notorious for witchcraft, and I had been riding
-for some hours along mountain paths, without coming across a human
-face. Overcome by the heat and fatigue, I tethered my horse to a tree
-by the road, and lay down under an arbutus-bush. I had been resting
-there a short while only, when there came along a lean old man bowed
-down under a load of branches. Utterly exhausted, he tottered in his
-steps, and just as he was about to fall, exclaimed: ‘Cæsar.’ On hearing
-such an invocation escape the lips of a poor woodcutter in this stony
-solitude, my heart overflowed with veneration for the tutelary City,
-which inspires, even unto the farthermost lands, the most rustic of
-minds with so great a conception of its sovereign providence. But
-sadness and a feeling of distress mingled with my admiration, brother
-mine, when I reflected upon the injury and insults to which the
-inheritance of Augustus and the fortune of Rome were exposed through
-men’s folly and the vices of the century.”
-
-“I have witnessed on the spot, brother mine,” replied Gallio, “the
-crimes and follies which sadden your mind. My cheek has blanched under
-the gaze of the victims of Caius from my seat in the Senate. I have
-held my peace, as I did not despair of better days. I am of the opinion
-that good citizens should serve the Republic under bad princes rather
-than shirk their duty in a useless death.”
-
-As Gallio was uttering these sentiments, two men, still in their youth
-and wearing the toga, came up to him. The one was Lucius Cassius, of a
-Roman family, plebeian but ancient, and having attained distinction.
-The other, Marcus Lollius, son and grandson of consuls, and moreover of
-a knightly family, which had sprung from the free town of Terracina.
-Both had frequented the schools of Athens, and acquired a knowledge of
-the laws of nature of which those Romans who had not been in Greece
-were totally ignorant.
-
-At the present moment, they were studying in Corinth the management
-of public affairs, and the proconsul surrounded himself with them as
-an ornamental adjunct to his magistracy. Somewhat behind them, the
-Greek Apollodorus, wearing the short cape of the philosophers, bald of
-head, and with Socratic beard, sauntered along, with uplifted arm and
-gesticulating fingers, discussing with himself.
-
-Gallio welcomed all three of them in kindly fashion.
-
-“The rose of dawn is already fading,” he said, “and the sun is
-beginning to shed its steeled darts. Come along, my good friends, to
-the coolness of the shady foliage beyond.”
-
-Saying this, he led them along the banks of a stream whose babbling
-murmur invited peaceful reflections, until they had reached an
-enclosure of verdant bushes in the midst of which lay in a hollow an
-alabaster basin filled with limpid waters on whose surface floated
-the feather of a dove, which had just bathed in them, and which was
-now cooing plaintively from a branch. They took their seats on a
-semicircular marble bench supported by griffins. Laurel and myrtle
-bushes blended their shadows about it. Statues encircled the enclosure.
-A wounded Amazon gracefully coiled her arm about her head. Grief
-appeared a thing of beauty on her lovely face. A shaggy Satyr was
-playing with a goat. A Venus, emerging from the bath, was drying her
-wetted limbs along which a shudder of pleasurable emotion seemed to
-run. Near by, a youthful Faun was smilingly placing a flute to his
-lips. His face was partly concealed by the branches, but his shining
-belly glistened amid the leafage.
-
-“That Faun seems animated,” remarked Marcus Lollius. “One could imagine
-that a gentle breathing was causing his bosom to heave.”
-
-“He is true to life, Marcus,” said Gallio. “One expects to hear rustic
-melodies flow from his flute. A Greek slave carved him out of the
-marble, in imitation of an ancient model. The Greeks formerly excelled
-in the making of these fanciful statues. Several of their efforts in
-this style are justly renowned. There is no gainsaying it: they have
-found the means of giving august traits to the gods and of expressing
-in both marble and bronze the majesty of the masters of the world. Who
-but admires the Olympian Zeus? And yet, who would care to be Phidias!”
-
-“No Roman would assuredly care to be Phidias,” exclaimed Lollius,
-who was spending the fortune he had inherited from his ancestry in
-ornamenting his villa at Pausilypum with the masterpieces of Phidias
-and Myron brought over from Greece and Asia.
-
-Lucius Cassius was of the same opinion. He argued with some warmth that
-the hands of a free man were not made to wield the sculptor’s chisel
-or the painter’s brush, and that no Roman citizen would condescend to
-the degrading work of casting bronze, hewing marble into shape, and
-painting forms on a wall.
-
-He professed admiration for the manners of the ancient times, and
-vaunted at every opportunity the ancestral virtues.
-
-“Men of the stamp of Curius and Fabricius cultivated their
-lettuce-beds, and slept under thatched roofs,” he said. “They wot of no
-other statue than the Priapus carved in the heart of a box-tree, who,
-protruding his vigorous pale in the centre of their garden, threatened
-pilferers with a terrible and shameful punishment.”
-
-Mela, who was well versed in the annals of Rome, opposed to this
-opinion the example of an old patrician.
-
-“In the days of the Republic,” he pointed out, “that illustrious man,
-Caius Fabius, of a family issued from Hercules and Evander, limned with
-his own hand on the walls of the Temple of Salus paintings so highly
-prized that their recent loss, on the destruction of the temple by
-fire, has been considered a public misfortune. It is moreover related
-that he did not doff his toga when painting, thus to indicate that such
-work was not unworthy of a Roman citizen. He was given the surname of
-Pictor, which his descendants were proud to bear.”
-
-Lucius Cassius replied with vivacity:
-
-“When painting victories in a temple, Caius Fabius had in mind those
-victories, and not the painting of them. No painters existed in Rome
-in those days. Anxious that the doughty deeds of his ancestors should
-for ever be present to the gaze of the Romans, he set an example to the
-artisans. But just as a pontiff or an ædile lays the first stone of
-an edifice, without exercising for that the trade of a mason or of an
-architect, Caius Fabius executed the first painting Rome boasted of,
-without it being permissible to number him with the workmen who earn
-their livelihood by painting on walls.”
-
-Apollodorus signified approval of this speech with a nod, and, stroking
-his philosophic beard, remarked:
-
-“The sons of Ascanius are born to rule the world. Any other care would
-be unworthy of them.”
-
-Then, speaking at some length and in well-rounded sentences, he sang
-the praises of the Romans. He flattered them because he feared them.
-But in his innermost being, he felt nothing but contempt for their
-shallow intelligences so devoid of finesse. He beslavered Gallio with
-praise in these words:
-
-“Thou hast ornamented this city with magnificent monuments. Thou hast
-assured the liberty of its Senate and of its people. Thou hast decreed
-excellent regulations for trade and navigation, and thou dispensest
-justice with even tempered equity. Thy statue shall stand in the Forum.
-The title shall be granted to you of the second founder of Corinth, or
-rather Corinth shall take from you the name of Annæa. All these things
-are worthy of a Roman, and worthy of Gallio. But, do not think that the
-Greeks have an exaggerated affection for the manual arts. If many of
-them are engaged in painting vases, in dyeing stuffs, and in modelling
-figures, it is through necessity. Ulysses constructed his bed and his
-ship with his own hands. At the same time, the Greeks proclaim that it
-is unworthy of a wise man to give himself up to futile and gross arts.
-In his youth, Socrates followed the trade of a sculptor, and modelled
-an image of the Charites still to be seen on the Acropolis of Athens.
-His skill was certainly not of a mediocre order, and, had he so wished,
-he could, like the most renowned artists, have portrayed an athlete
-throwing a discus or bandaging his head. But he abandoned like works
-to devote himself to the quest of wisdom, as commanded by the oracle.
-Henceforth, he attached himself to young men, not for the purpose of
-measuring the proportions of their bodies but solely to teach them that
-which is honest. He preferred those whose soul was beautiful to those
-of perfect form, differing in this respect from sculptors, painters and
-debauchees, who consider only external beauty, despising the inner
-comeliness. You are aware that Phidias engraved on the great toe of his
-Jupiter the name of an athlete, because he was handsome, and without
-considering whether he was pure.”
-
-“Hence it is,” was Gallio’s summing up, “that we do not sing the
-praises of sculptors, while bestowing them on their works.”
-
-“By Hercules!” exclaimed Lollius, “I do not know whether to admire most
-that Venus or that Faun. The goddess seems to reflect coolness from
-the water still dripping from her. She is truly the desire of gods and
-men; do you not fear, Gallio, that some night, a lout concealed in your
-grounds may subject her to an outrage similar to the one inflicted by a
-profane youth, so it is reported, on the Aphrodite of the Cnidians? The
-priestesses of her temple discovered one morning traces of the outrage
-on the body of the goddess, and travellers affirm that from that day
-until now she bears the indelible mark of her defilement. The audacity
-of the man and the patience of the Immortal One are to be wondered at.”
-
-“The crime did not remain unpunished,” affirmed Gallio. “The
-sacrilegious profaner flung himself into the sea, and fell on the rocks
-a shapeless mass. He was never again seen.”
-
-“There can be no doubt,” resumed Lollius, “that the Venus of Cnidus
-surpasses all others in beauty. But the artisan who carved the one in
-your grounds, Gallio, knew how to make marble plastic. Look at that
-Faun; he is laughing, and saliva moistens his teeth and his lips; his
-cheeks have the fresh bloom of the apple: his whole body glistens with
-youth. However, I prefer the Venus to the Faun.”
-
-Raising his right arm, Apollodorus said:
-
-“Most gentle Lollius, just think a bit, and you will fain admit that
-a like preference is pardonable in an ignorant individual who follows
-his instincts and who reasons not, but that it is not permitted to one
-as wise as yourself. That Venus cannot be as beautiful as that Faun,
-for the body of woman enjoys a perfection lesser than that of man, and
-the copy of a thing which is less perfect can never equal in beauty the
-copy of a thing that is more perfect. No doubt can assuredly exist,
-Lollius, that the body of woman is less beautiful than that of man,
-since it contains a less beautiful soul. Women are vain, quarrelsome,
-their mind occupied with trifles and incapable of elevated thoughts,
-while sickness oftentimes obscures their intellect.”
-
-“And yet,” remarked Gallio, “both in Rome and in Athens, virgins and
-matrons have been held worthy of presiding over sacred rites and of
-placing offerings on the altars. Nay more, the gods have at times
-selected virgins to give utterance to their oracular words, or to
-reveal the future to men. Cassandra wore the bands of Apollo about her
-head and prophesied the discomfiture of the Trojans. Juturna, to whom
-the love of a god gave immortality, was entrusted with the guardianship
-of the fountains of Rome.”
-
-“Quite true,” replied Apollodorus. “But the gods sell dearly to virgins
-the privilege of interpreting their wishes, and of announcing future
-events. While conferring on them the power of seeing that which is
-hidden, they deprive them of their reason and inflict madness on them.
-I will, however, Gallio, grant you that some women are better than some
-men and that some men are less good than some women. This arises from
-the fact that the two sexes are not as distinct and separate from each
-other as one would believe, and that, quite on the contrary, there
-is something of man in many women, and of woman in many a man. The
-following is the explanation of this commingling:
-
-“The ancestors of the men who nowadays people the earth sprang from
-the hands of Prometheus, who, to give them shape, kneaded the clay
-as does the potter. He did not confine himself to shaping with his
-hands a single couple. Far too prudent and too industrious to cause
-the entire human race to grow from one seed and from a single vessel,
-he undertook the manufacture of a multitude of women and men, in
-order to secure at once to humanity the advantage of numbers. In order
-better to carry out so difficult a work, he modelled separately at the
-outset all the parts which were to constitute both male and female
-bodies. He fashioned as many lungs, livers, hearts, brains, bladders,
-spleens, intestines, matrices and generative organs as were required,
-and, lastly, he made with subtle art, and in sufficient quantity,
-all the organs by means of which human beings might breathe freely,
-feed themselves, and enjoy the reproduction of the species. He forgot
-neither muscles, tendons, bones, blood nor fluids. He next cut out
-skins, intending to place in each one, as in a sack, the requisite
-articles. All these component parts of men and women were duly
-finished, and nothing remained but to put them together, when he was of
-a sudden invited to partake of supper at the residence of Bacchus. He
-went thither, crowned with roses, and indulged too freely in libations
-to the god, returning with tottering steps to his workshop. His brain
-befogged with the fumes of wine, his eyesight dimmed, and his hands
-shaky, he resumed his task, greatly to our misfortune. The distribution
-of organs among human beings seemed to him an easy enough pastime. He
-knew not what he was about, and was perfectly contented with his job,
-however badly he accomplished it. He was constantly and inadvertently
-allotting to woman that which was proper to man, and to man the things
-pertaining to woman.
-
-“Thus it came about that our first parents were composed of
-ill-assorted pieces which did not harmonise. And, having mated
-by choice or at haphazard, they produced beings as incoherent as
-themselves. Thus has it come about, through the Titan’s fault, that we
-see so many virile women and so many effeminate men. This also explains
-the contradictory characteristics to be met with in the firmest of
-minds and how it is that the most determined character is perpetually
-false to itself. And, finally, this is why we are all at variance with
-our own selves.”
-
-Lucius Cassius expressed condemnation of this fable, because it did not
-teach man to conquer himself, but on the contrary induced him to yield
-to nature.
-
-Gallio pointed out that the poets and philosophers gave a different
-interpretation as to the origin of the world and the creation of
-mankind.
-
-“The fables told by the Greeks,” he said, “should not be believed
-in too blindly, nor should we hold as truthful, Apollodorus, what
-they state in particular concerning the stones thrown by Pyrrha. The
-philosophers are not in accord among themselves as to the principle
-presiding over the creation of the world, and leave us in doubt as to
-whether the earth was produced by water, by air, or, as seems more
-credible, by the subtile heat. But the Greeks wish to know all things,
-and so they forge ingenious falsehood. How much better it is to confess
-our ignorance. The past is as much concealed from us as is the future;
-we are circumscribed by two dense clouds, in the forgetfulness of
-what was, and in the uncertainty of what shall be. And yet we suffer
-ourselves to be the playthings of an inquisitive desire to become
-acquainted with the causes of things, and a consuming anxiety incites
-us to ponder over the destinies of mankind and of the world.”
-
-“It is true,” sighed Cassius, “that we are everlastingly striving to
-penetrate the impenetrable future. We toil at this quest with all our
-might, and call to our aid all kinds of means. Anon we think to attain
-our object by meditation; again, by prayer and ecstasy. Some of us
-consult the oracles of the gods; others, fearing not to do that which
-is forbidden, appeal to the augurs of Chaldæa, or try the Babylonian
-spells. Futile and sacrilegious curiosity! For, of what advantage would
-be to us the knowledge of future things, since they are inevitable!
-Nevertheless the wise men, still more so than the vulgar herd, feel
-the desire of delving into the future and of, so to speak, hurling
-themselves into it. It is doubtless because they hope thus to escape
-the present which inflicts on them so much that is sad and distasteful.
-Why should not the men of to-day be goaded with the desire of fleeing
-from these wretched times? We are living in an age replete with deeds
-of cowardice, abounding in ignominious acts, and fertile in crimes.”
-
-Cassius spoke at some length in depreciation of the times in which he
-lived. He lamented the fact that the Romans, fallen from their ancient
-virtues, no longer found any pleasure except in the consumption of the
-oysters of the Lucrine lake and of the birds of Phasis river, and that
-they had no taste except for mummers, chariot-drivers, and gladiators.
-He deplored the ills which the Empire was suffering from, the insolent
-luxury of the great, the contemptible avidity of the clients, and the
-savage depravity of the multitude.
-
-Gallio and his brother agreed with him. They loved virtue.
-Nevertheless, they had nothing in common with the patricians of old
-who, having no other care than the fattening of their swine, and the
-performance of the sacred rites, conquered the world for the better
-administration of their farms. This nobility of the byre, instituted
-by Romulus and Remus, was long since extinct. The patrician families
-created by the divine Julius and by the Emperor Augustus, had passed
-away. Intelligent men from all the provinces of the Empire had stepped
-into their places. Romans in Rome, they were nowhere strangers. They
-greatly surpassed the old Cethegus family by their refined minds
-and humane feelings. They did not regret the Republic; they did not
-regret liberty, the recollection of which recalled simultaneously
-proscriptions and civil wars. They honoured Cato as the heroic figure
-of another age, without wishing to see so exalted a type of virtue
-arise on top of fresh ruins. They looked upon the Augustan epoch and
-the first years of Tiberius as the happiest the world had ever known,
-since the Golden Age had existed in the imagination of the poets only.
-They lamented the fact that the new order of things, which had promised
-the world a long reign of felicity, should have so promptly burdened
-Rome with an unheard of shame unknown even to the contemporaries of
-Marius and Sulla. They had, during the madness of Caius, seen the best
-citizens branded with a hot iron, sentenced to the mines, to labour on
-the roads, thrown to wild beasts, fathers compelled to be present at
-the agony of their children, and men shining by their virtues, such as
-Cremutius Cordus, suffer themselves to die of starvation, in order to
-cheat the tyrant of their death. To Rome’s shame, be it said, Caligula
-respected neither his sisters nor the most illustrious dames. And, what
-filled these rhetors and philosophers with as great an indignation as
-the one they felt over the rape of the matrons and the assassination
-of the best citizens, were the crimes perpetrated by Caius against
-eloquence and letters. This madman had conceived the idea of destroying
-the poems of Homer, and had caused to be removed from all bookshelves
-the writings, the portraits, and the names of Virgil and of Livy.
-Finally, Gallio could not forgive him for having compared the style of
-Seneca to mortar without cement.
-
-They dreaded Claudius in a somewhat lesser degree, but despised him
-the more for all that. They ridiculed his pumpkin-like head and his
-seal-like voice. That old savant was not a monster of wickedness.
-The worst they could reproach him with was his weakness. But, in the
-exercise of the sovereign power, such weakness became at times as cruel
-as the cruelty of Caius. They also bore domestic grievances against
-him. If Caius had held Seneca up to ridicule, Claudius had banished him
-to Corsica. It is true that he had subsequently recalled him to Rome
-and conferred a prætorship on him. But they showed him no gratitude
-for having thus carried out the behests of Agrippina, in ignorance of
-what he was commanding. Indignant but long suffering, they left it
-to the Empress to determine the fate of the aged man, and the choice
-of the new prince. Many rumours were current to the shame of the
-unchaste and cruel daughter of Germanicus. They heeded them not, and
-sang the praises of the illustrious woman to whom the Senecas owed
-the termination of their misfortune and their rise in honours. As
-will oftentimes happen, their convictions were in harmony with their
-interests. A painful experience of public life had left unshaken their
-trust in the _régime_ established by the divine Augustus, a _régime_
-placed on a firmer basis by Tiberius, and under which they filled high
-positions. They were reckoning on a new master to redress the evils
-engendered by the masters of the Empire.
-
-Gallio produced from the folds of his toga a roll of papyrus.
-
-“Dear friends,” he said, “I have learnt this morning, through letters
-from Rome, that our young prince has married Octavia, the daughter of
-Cæsar.”
-
-A murmur of approval greeted the news.
-
-“We should indeed,” continued Gallio, “congratulate ourselves over
-a union, by virtue of which the prince, combining with his former
-qualifications those of husband and of son-in-law, becomes henceforth
-the equal of Britannicus. My brother Seneca never ceases praising in
-his letters to me the eloquence and gentleness of his pupil who sheds
-lustre on his youth by pleading before the Senate in the presence of
-the Emperor. He has not yet completed his sixteenth year, yet he has
-already won the cases of three unfortunate or guilty cities--Ilion,
-Bolonia, and Apamea.”
-
-“He has not then,” asked Lucius Cassius, “inherited the evil
-disposition of the Domitians, his ancestors?”
-
-“Indeed he has not,” replied Gallio. “It is Germanicus who lives anew
-in him.”
-
-Annæus Mela, who was not looked upon as a sycophant, joined in the
-praise of the son of Agrippina. His praises appeared affecting and
-sincere, since he pledged them, so to speak, on the head of his son,
-who was still of tender age.
-
-“Nero is chaste, modest, of a kindly disposition, and religious. My
-little Lucan, who is dearer to me than my eyes, was his play- and
-school-mate. Together they practised declamation in the Greek and Latin
-languages. Together they attempted to indite verse. Never did Nero, in
-the course of these contests of skill at versification, manifest the
-slightest symptom of jealousy. Quite the contrary, he enjoyed praising
-his rival’s verses, which, in spite of his tender age, revealed traces
-here and there of a consuming energy. He sometimes seemed happy to be
-surpassed by the nephew of his teacher. Such was the charming modesty
-of the prince of youth! Poets will some day compare the friendship of
-Nero and Lucan with that of Euryalus and Nisus.”
-
-“Nero,” the proconsul went on to say, “displays with the ardour of
-youth a gentle and merciful spirit. Time will but strengthen such
-virtues.
-
-“Claudius, when adopting him, has wisely acquiesced in the hope
-expressed by the Senate and the wish of the people. In so doing, he has
-removed from the Imperial succession a child overwhelmed by the shame
-of his mother, and has now, by giving Octavia to Nero, secured the
-accession of a youthful Cæsar whom Rome will delight in. The respectful
-son of an honoured mother, the zealous disciple of a philosopher, Nero,
-whose adolescence is illumined with the most agreeable qualities, Nero,
-our hope and the hope of the world, will remember, when clad in purple,
-the teachings of the Portico, and will rule the universe with justice
-and moderation.”
-
-“We welcome the omen,” remarked Lollius. “May an era of happiness dawn
-upon the human race!”
-
-“’Tis difficult to predict the future,” said Gallio. “Still, we
-experience no doubts regarding the eternity of the City. The oracles
-have promised Rome an empire without end, and it would be sacrilegious
-not to put our faith in the gods. Shall I reveal to you my fondest
-hope? I joyfully expect the time when peace will reign for ever on the
-earth, following upon the chastising of the Parthians. Yes indeed, we
-may, without fear of deceiving ourselves, herald the end of war so
-hated by mothers. Who is there to disturb the Roman peace henceforth?
-Our eagles have spread to the confines of the universe. All the nations
-have experienced our strength and our mercy. The Arab, the Sabæan,
-the dweller on the slopes of the Hæmus, the Sarmatian who quenches
-his thirst with the blood of his steed, the Sygambri of the curly
-locks, the woolly-headed Ethiopian, all come in hordes to worship Rome
-their protectress. Whence would new barbarians spring? Is it likely
-that the icy plains of the North or the burning sands of Libya hold
-in store enemies of the Roman nation? All Barbarians, won over to
-our friendship, will lay down their arms, and Rome, the white-haired
-great-grandmother, tranquil in her old age, will see the nations
-respectfully grouped about her as her adopted children, dwelling in
-harmony and love.”
-
-All signified their approval of the foregoing sentiments, excepting
-Cassius, who shook his head in disagreement.
-
-He felt a pride in his military ancestry while the glory of arms, so
-greatly extolled by poets and rhetors, kindled his enthusiasm.
-
-“I doubt, my friend Gallio,” he commented, “that nations will ever
-cease to hate and fear one another. To tell the truth, I should not
-desire such a consummation. Did war cease, what would become of
-strength of character, grandeur of soul, and love of country? Courage
-and devotion would be virtues out of date.”
-
-“Rest assured, Lucius,” said Gallio, “that when men shall cease to
-conquer one another, they will strive to subdue their own selves. That
-is the most virtuous attempt they can make, and the most noble use
-to which they can put their bravery and magnanimity. Yes indeed, the
-august mother whose wrinkles and whose hairs, blanched by centuries, we
-worship, Rome, will establish universal peace. Then shall the enjoyment
-of life be realised. Life under certain conditions is worth living.
-Life is a tiny flame between two infinite shadows; ’tis our share of
-the divine essence. During the term of his life, a man is similar to
-the gods.”
-
-While Gallio was thus discoursing, a dove perched itself on the
-shoulder of the Venus, whose marble contours gleamed among the myrtles.
-
-“My dear Gallio,” said Lollius with a smile, “the bird of Aphrodite
-takes delight in thy words. They are gentle and full of gracefulness.”
-
-A slave approached, bearing cool wine, and the friends of the proconsul
-discoursed of the gods. Apollodorus was of opinion that it was not easy
-to grasp their nature. Lollius doubted their very existence.
-
-“When thunder peals,” he said, “it all depends upon the philosopher
-whether it is the cloud or the god who has thundered.”
-
-Cassius, however, did not countenance such thoughtless arguments. He
-believed in the gods of the Republic. While entertaining doubts as to
-the extent of their providence, he asserted their existence, as he
-did not wish to differ from humanity on an essential point. And to
-support his belief in the faith of his ancestors, he had recourse to an
-argument he had learnt from the Greeks.
-
-“The gods exist,” he said. “Men have formed their idea of what they are
-like. Now, it is impossible to conceive an image not based on reality.
-How would it be possible to see Minerva, Neptune, and Mercury, were
-there neither Mercury, nor Neptune, nor Minerva?”
-
-“You have convinced me,” said Lollius mockingly. “The old woman who
-sells honey-cakes in the Forum, outside the basilica, has seen the
-god Typhon, he with the shaggy head of an ass, and a monster belly.
-He threw her on her back, threw her clothes over her ears, chastised
-her while keeping time to each resounding blow, and left her for dead,
-after polluting her in a disgusting fashion. She has herself told how,
-even as Antiope, she had been favoured with the visit of an immortal
-god. It is certain that the god Typhon exists, since he committed an
-outrage on an old cake-selling hag.”
-
-“In spite of thy mockery, Marcus, I do not doubt the existence of the
-gods,” resumed Cassius. “And I believe that they enjoy a human form,
-since it is under that form that they always show themselves to us,
-whether we slumber or whether we are awake.”
-
-“It would be better,” remarked Apollodorus, “to say that men possess
-the divine form, since the gods existed before them.”
-
-“My dear Apollodorus,” exclaimed Lollius. “You forget that Diana was
-first worshipped under the form of a tree, and that several important
-gods have the shape of an unhewn stone. Cybele is represented, not as a
-woman should be, with two breasts, but with several teats like a bitch
-or a sow. The sun is a god, but being too hot to assume the human form,
-he has taken the shape of a ball; he is a round god.”
-
-Annæus Mela gently censured this academic jesting.
-
-“All that is related about the gods,” he said, “should not be taken
-literally. The vulgar herd calls wheat Ceres, and wine Bacchus. But
-where is to be found the man crazy enough to believe that he drinks and
-eats a god? Let us indulge in a more exalted knowledge of the divine
-nature. The gods are but the several parts of nature, and they are all
-lost in one god, who is nature in its entirety.”
-
-The proconsul signified his approval of the words of his brother, and
-speaking in a serious strain, defined the attributes of divinity.
-
-“God is the soul of the world; this soul spreads to all parts of the
-universe, infusing motion and life into it. This soul, a creative
-flame, penetrating the inert mass of matter, gave shape to the world,
-governing and preserving it. Divinity, an active force, is essentially
-good. The matter which it has put to good use, being inert and passive,
-is bad in certain of its parts. God has been powerless to change its
-nature. This explains the origin of the evil in the world. Our souls
-are particles of the divine fire into which they will some day be
-merged. Consequently, God is within us and he dwells in particular in
-the virtuous man whose soul is not hampered with gross materialism.
-This wise man, in whom God dwells, is God’s equal. He should not
-implore him, but contain him within himself. And what madness it
-is to pray to God! What an act of impiety it is to petition him!
-It is tantamount to believing that it is possible to enlighten his
-intelligence, to change his heart, and to persuade him to mend his
-behaviour. It is displaying ignorance of the necessity governing his
-immutable wisdom. He is subjected to Destiny, or, to be more accurate,
-he is Destiny. His ways are laws to which he is like ourselves
-subjected. For once that he commands, he obeys for ever. Free and
-powerful in his submission, it is to himself that he shows obedience.
-All the happenings in the world are the manifestations of sovereign
-intentions originating with himself. His helplessness against himself
-is infinite.”
-
-Gallio’s speech was applauded by his hearers. Apollodorus, however,
-craved permission to submit a few objections.
-
-“You are right, Gallio,” he said, “when you believe that Jupiter is
-at the mercy of Anankè and I hold with you that Anankè is the first
-among the immortal goddesses. But it appears to me that your god,
-above all admirable in his compass and his perpetuity, had better
-intentions than luck when he created the world, since he found nothing
-better wherewith to knead it than a rebellious and ingrate substance,
-and that the material betrays the workman. I cannot but feel for him
-over his discomfiture. The potters of Athens are more fortunate. They
-procure, for the purpose of making vases, a delicate and plastic clay
-which readily takes and preserves the contours they give it. Hence do
-their goblets and amphoræ present an agreeable form. Their curves are
-graceful, and the painter limns with ease figures pleasing to the
-eye, such as old Silenus bestriding his ass, the toilet of Aphrodite,
-and the chaste Amazons. When I come to think of it, Gallio, I am of
-the opinion that if your god was less fortunate than the potters of
-Athens, ’tis for the reason that he lacked wisdom and that he was a
-poor artisan. The material at his disposal was not of the best. Still,
-it was not devoid of all serviceable properties, as you have yourself
-confessed. Nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad. A thing may be
-bad if put to a certain use, while it may be excellent in some other.
-It would be waste of time to plant olive-trees in the clay used in
-fashioning amphoræ. The tree of Pallas would not grow in the light and
-pure soil of which are made the beautiful vases which our victorious
-athletes receive, blushing the while with pride and modesty. It seems
-to me, Gallio, that your god, when fashioning the world with a material
-that was not suitable for the undertaking, was guilty of the mistake
-which a vine-dresser of Megara would be committing, were he to plant
-a vine in modelling clay, or were some worker in ceramics to select
-for the making of amphoræ the stony soil which affords nutriment to
-the clusters of the grape-vine. Your god, you say, made the universe.
-He ought certainly to have given form to some other thing, in order
-to make suitable use of his material. Since the substance, as you
-assert, proved rebellious to him, either through its inherent inertia,
-or through some other bad quality, should he have persisted in putting
-it to a use it could not respond to, and, as the saying goes, carve
-his bow out of a cypress? The secret of industry does not consist in
-accomplishing much, but in doing good work. Why did he not content
-himself with creating some small thing, say a gnat, or a drop of water,
-but finish it to perfection?
-
-“I might add further remarks about your god, Gallio, and ask you, for
-instance, if you do not entertain a fear that from his constant rubbing
-against matter, he may wear out, just as a millstone becomes worn in
-the long run in the course of grinding wheat. But such questions are
-not to be solved in a hurry, and the time of a proconsul is precious.
-Permit me at least to say to you that you are not justified in
-believing that your god rules and preserves the world, since, according
-to your own admission, he deprived himself of intelligence after having
-become acquainted with all things; of will-power, after having willed
-all things, and of power, following upon his ability to do what he
-saw fit. Herein again lay, on his part, a serious mistake, for he was
-thus an instrument in depriving himself of the means of correcting his
-imperfect work. So far as I am concerned, I am inclined to believe that
-god is in reality, not the one you have conceived, but indeed the
-matter he discovered on a certain day, and which the Greeks have styled
-chaos. You are mistaken in your belief that matter is inert. It is ever
-in motion, and its perpetual activity keeps life a-going throughout the
-universe.”
-
-Thus spake the philosopher Apollodorus. Gallio, who had listened to
-his speech with some degree of impatience, denied that he had fallen a
-victim to the mistakes and contradictions with which the Greek charged
-him. But he failed in refuting successfully the arguments of his
-opponent, as his intellect was not a subtle one and because he demanded
-principally of philosophy the means of rendering men virtuous, and
-because he was interested in useful truths only.
-
-“Try to grasp, Apollodorus,” he said, “that God is none other than
-nature. Nature and himself are one. God and Nature are the two names of
-a single being, just as Novatus and Gallio designate one and the same
-man. God, if you prefer, is divine reason commingling with the earth.
-You need have no fear that he will wear out through this amalgamation,
-since his tenuous substance participates of the fire which consumes all
-matter while remaining unchanged.
-
-“But should, nevertheless,” proceeded Gallio, “my doctrine embrace
-ill-assorted ideas, do not blame me for it, my dear Apollodorus, but
-rather give me praise because I suffer a few contradictions to find
-a place in my mind. Were I not conciliatory as regards my own ideas,
-were I to confer upon a single system an exclusive preference, I could
-no longer tolerate the freedom of every opinion; having destroyed my
-own freedom of thought, I could not readily tolerate it in the case
-of others, and I should forfeit the respect due to every doctrine
-established or professed by a sincere man. The gods forbid that I
-should see my opinion prevail to the exclusion of any other, and
-exercise an absolute sway on other minds. Conjure up a picture, my
-dear friends, of the state of manners and morals, were a sufficient
-number of men firmly to believe that they were the sole possessors
-of the truth, if, by some impossible chance, they were thoroughly
-agreed as to that truth. A too narrow piety among the Athenians, who
-are nevertheless full of wisdom and of doubt, was the cause of the
-banishment of Anaxagoras and of the death of Socrates. What would
-happen were millions of men enslaved by one solitary idea concerning
-the nature of the gods? The genius of the Greeks and the prudence of
-our ancestors made allowance for doubt, and tolerated the worship of
-Jupiter under several names. No sooner should a powerful sect come on
-this ailing earth and proclaim that Jupiter has one name only, than
-blood would flow the world over, and no longer would there be but
-one Caius whose madness should threaten the human race with death.
-All the men of such a sect would be so many Caiuses. They would face
-death for a name. For a name, they would kill, since it is rather in
-the nature of men to kill than to die on behalf of what seems to them
-true and most excellent. Hence it is better to base public order on
-the diversity of opinions, than to seek to establish it on a universal
-consent to one and the same belief. A like unanimous consent could
-never be realised, and in seeking to obtain it, men would become stupid
-and maddened. For, indeed, the most patent truth is but a vain jangle
-of words to the men on whom it is attempted to impose it. You would
-compel me to believe a thing which you understand, but which passes my
-understanding. You would thus be forcing upon me not a thing that is
-intelligible, but one that is incomprehensible. And I am nearer you
-when holding a different belief, one which I understand. For, in that
-case, both of us are making use of our reason, and we both possess an
-intelligent comprehension of our own belief.”
-
-“Enough of all this,” remarked Lollius. “Educated men will never
-combine for the purpose of stifling all other doctrines to the
-advantage of a single one. As to the vulgar herd, who cares to teach
-it that Jupiter has six hundred names, or a single one?”
-
-Cassius, slow of utterance, and of a serious turn of mind, spoke next.
-
-“Beware, Gallio,” he said, “lest the existence of God, such as
-expounded by you, be not in contradiction with the beliefs of our
-forefathers. It matters little, after all, whether your arguments are
-better or worse than those of Apollodorus. What we have to consider
-is the fatherland. To its religion does Rome owe her virtues and her
-power. To destroy our gods is to compass our own destruction.”
-
-“You need not fear, my friend,” rejoined Gallio with some show of
-animation, “have no fear, I repeat, that I deny in an insolent spirit
-the heavenly protectors of the Empire. The only divinity which the
-philosophers acknowledge embodies within itself all the gods, just as
-humanity embraces all men. The gods whose worship was instituted by the
-wisdom of our forefathers, Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Quirinus, and
-Hercules, constitute the most august parts of the universal providence,
-and no less than the whole do these parts exist. No, indeed, I am not
-an impious man, nor inimical to the laws. None respects the sacred
-things more than Gallio.”
-
-No one seemed disposed to dispute these ideas. Thereupon Lollius,
-bringing the conversation back to its starting-point, remarked:
-
-“We have been seeking to penetrate the veil of the future. What are
-man’s destinies, according to you, my friends, after his demise?”
-
-In reply to this question, Annæus Mela promised immortality to heroes
-and wise men, while denying it to the common of mankind.
-
-“It passes belief,” he said, “that misers, gluttons, and mean-spirited
-men should possess an immortal soul. Could so singular a privilege
-be the portion of coarse and silly oafs? I cannot entertain such a
-thought. It would be an insult to the majority of the gods to believe
-that they have decreed the immortality of the boor who wots only of his
-goats and cheeses, or of the freedman, richer than Crœsus, who had no
-other cares in the world than to check the accounts of his stewards.
-Why, good gods, should they be provided with a soul? What sort of a
-figure would they present among heroes and wise men in the Elysian
-fields? These wretches, like so many others here below, are incapable
-of realising humanity’s short-spanned life. How could they realise a
-life of longer duration? Vulgar souls are snuffed out at the hour of
-death, or they may for a while whirl about our globe, to vanish in the
-dense strata of the atmosphere. Virtue only, by making man the equal of
-the gods, makes them participate in their immortality. To quote the
-poet:
-
-    “‘Illustrious virtue never descends into the Stygian shades.
-    Lead a hero’s life, and the fates will not consign thee to the
-    pitiless river of forgetfulness. When comes thy last day, glory
-    will open to thee the path of heaven.’
-
-“Let us realise our condition. We must all die, and all that we are
-must die. The man of shining virtue simply escapes the common destiny
-by becoming god, and by obtaining his admission into Olympus among the
-Heroes and the Gods.”
-
-“But he is not conscious of his own apotheosis,” said Marcus Lollius.
-“There does not exist upon earth a slave or a barbarian who is not
-aware that Augustus is a god. But Augustus knows it not. Hence it is
-that our Cæsars journey reluctantly towards the constellations, and
-even now we see Claudius near with blanched face these shadowy honours.”
-
-Gallio shook his head, and remarked, “The poet Euripides has said:
-
-    “‘We love the life which is revealed unto us upon earth,
-    since we know of no other.’
-
-“Everything that is related concerning the dead is open to doubt, and
-is bound up with fables and falsehoods. Nevertheless, I believe that
-virtuous men attain an immortality of which they are fully cognisant.
-Let it be clearly understood that they achieve it by their own efforts,
-and not as a recompense conferred by the gods. By what right should
-the immortal gods degrade a virtuous man to the extent of rewarding
-him? The leading of a blameless life is its own reward, and no prize is
-there worthy of virtue, which is its own reward. Let us leave to vulgar
-souls, that they may thereby sustain their wretched fortitude, the
-dread of punishment, and the hope of a reward. Let us love virtue for
-its own sake. Gallio, if what the poets tell of the infernal regions
-be true, if after your death you are arraigned before the tribunal of
-Minos, you may say to him: “Minos shall not judge me. By my actions
-have I been judged.””
-
-“How,” inquired Apollodorus the philosopher, “can the gods give to men
-an immortality they themselves do not enjoy?”
-
-Apollodorus, indeed, did not believe in the immortality of the gods, or
-rather that their sway over the world should be exercised for all time.
-
-He proceeded to develop the reasons for his belief.
-
-“The reign of Jupiter,” he said, “began after the Golden Age. We know
-through the traditions preserved for us by the poets that the son of
-Saturn succeeded to his father in the governing of the world. Now,
-everything that had a beginning must have an end. It is foolish to
-suppose that anything finite in one part can be infinite in another. It
-would then become necessary to call it finite and infinite as a whole,
-which would be absurd. Anything possessed of an extreme point can be
-measured from that point itself, and could not in any way cease to be
-measured at any point of its extent, without changing its nature, and
-the proper of what is measurable is to be comprised between two extreme
-points. We may therefore make up our minds that the reign of Jupiter
-will end just as did that of Saturn. As Æschylus has said:
-
-    “‘Jupiter is subordinate to Anankè. He cannot escape his
-    fate.’”
-
-Gallio thought the same, for reasons derived from the observation of
-nature.
-
-“I consider with you, Apollodorus, that the reigns of the gods are
-not immortal, and the observation of the celestial phenomena inclines
-me to this belief. The heavens, as well as the earth, are subject
-to corruption, and the divine palaces, liable to ruin just as the
-dwellings of mankind, crumble under the weight of the centuries. I have
-seen stones fall from the aerial regions. They were blackened and
-corroded by fire, and bore testimony to a celestial conflagration.
-
-“The bodies of the gods, Apollodorus, are not any more exempt from
-injury than their dwellings. If it be true, as Homer teaches, that the
-gods, inhabitants of Olympus, impregnate the flanks of goddesses and
-mortal women, it is assuredly because they are not themselves immortal,
-in spite of their life’s span being greater than that of mankind,
-and hence it is patent that fate subjects them to the necessity of
-transmitting a life which they may not enjoy for ever.
-
-“In truth,” said Lollius, “it is hardly to be conceived that immortals
-should produce children in the same way as human beings and animals,
-or even that they should possess organs adapted to such a purpose. But
-perhaps the loves of the gods owe their origin to the mendacity of the
-poets.”
-
-Apollodorus persisted in his assertion that the reign of Jupiter
-would some day cease, supporting his opinion with subtile reasons. He
-prophesied that Prometheus would succeed the son of Saturn.
-
-“Prometheus,” replied Gallio, “was set free by Hercules with the
-consent of Jupiter, and he enjoys in Olympus the happiness he owes to
-his foresight and to his love of mankind. Nothing will ever happen to
-change his happy fate.”
-
-Apollodorus asked him:
-
-“Who then, according to you, Gallio, shall inherit the thunder which
-sets the world a-quaking?”
-
-“Although it may seem audacious to answer this question,” replied
-Gallio, “I think I am competent to do so, and to name Jove’s successor.”
-
-As he spoke, an officer of the basilica, whose duty it was to call
-cases, approached him, and informed him that some suitors were waiting
-for him in court.
-
-The proconsul asked if the matter was one of paramount importance.
-
-“It is a most petty case, Gallio,” replied the officer of the basilica.
-“A man from the harbour of Cenchreæ has just dragged a stranger before
-your tribunal. They are both Jews and of humble condition. They are
-quarrelling over some barbarian custom or some gross superstition, as
-is the wont of Syrians. Here is the minute of their case. It is all
-Punic to the clerk who wrote it.
-
-“The plaintiff sets forth, Gallio, that he is the head of the assembly
-of the Jews or, as one says in Greek, of the synagogue, and he begs
-justice of you against a man from Tarsus, who, recently settled at
-Cenchreæ, goes every Saturday to the synagogue, for the purpose of
-speaking against the Jewish law. ‘It is a scandal and an abomination,
-which thou shalt put an end to,’ says the plaintiff, and he clamours
-for the integrity of the privileges belonging to the children of
-Israel. The defendant claims for all those who believe his teachings
-adoption and incorporation into the family of a man named Abraham, and
-he threatens the plaintiff with the divine ire. You see, Gallio, that
-the case is a petty and ambiguous one. It rests with you to decide
-whether you will take the case yourself, or whether you will leave it
-to be judged by a lesser magistrate.”
-
-The proconsul’s friends begged him not to disturb himself for so
-miserable an affair.
-
-“I make it my duty,” he said in response to their prayers, “to follow
-in this respect the rules laid down by the divine Augustus. I must
-therefore try personally, not only important cases, but also smaller
-ones, when the jurisprudence concerning them has not been determined.
-Certain light cases recur daily and are of importance, if only for
-their frequency. It is meet that I should personally try one of each
-class. A judgment rendered by a proconsul serves as an example, and
-establishes a precedent in law.”
-
-“You deserve praise, Gallio,” said Lollius, “for the zeal you display
-in the fulfilment of your consular duties. But, acquainted as I am with
-your wisdom, I doubt whether it is agreeable for you to render justice.
-That which men honour with this title is really an administration of
-base prudence and of cruel revenge. Human laws are the daughters of
-fear and anger.”
-
-Gallio protested feebly against this definition. He did not admit that
-human laws bore the character of real justice, saying:
-
-“The punishment of crime consists in its commission. The penalty
-added thereto by the laws is superfluous, and does not fit the crime.
-However, since through the fault of mankind laws there are, we should
-apply them equitably.”
-
-Thereupon he told the officer of the court that he would proceed to the
-tribunal very shortly, and, turning towards his friends, he said:
-
-“To speak truly, I have a special reason for looking into this case
-with my own eyes. I must not neglect any opportunity of keeping an eye
-on these Jews of Cenchreæ, a turbulent, rancorous race, which shows
-contempt for the laws, and which it is not easy to hold in check. If
-ever the peace of Corinth should be troubled, it will be by them. This
-port, where all the ships of the East come to anchor, conceals amid a
-congested mass of warehouses and taverns, a countless horde of thieves,
-eunuchs, soothsayers, sorcerers, lepers, desecraters of graves, and
-assassins. It is the haunt of every abomination and of every form of
-superstition. Isis, Eschmoun, the Phœnician Venus, and the god of the
-Jews, are all worshipped there. I am alarmed at seeing those unclean
-Jews multiply, rather in the way of fishes than in that of mankind.
-They swarm about the miry streets of the harbour like crabs under the
-rocks.”
-
-“What is more dreadful is that they infest Rome to a like extent,”
-exclaimed Lucius Cassius. “To great Pompey’s own door must be laid
-the crime of introducing this plague of leprosy into the City. He it
-was who committed the wrong of not treating as did our ancestors the
-prisoners he brought from Judæa for his triumphal entry into the City,
-and they have peopled the right bank of the Tiber with their base
-spawn. Dwelling about the base of the Janiculum, amid the tanneries,
-the gut-works, and the fermenting-troughs, in the suburbs whither
-flock all the abominations and horrors of the world, they earn their
-livelihood at the vilest of trades, unloading lighters, selling rags
-and refuse, and exchanging matches for broken glasses. Their women tell
-fortunes in the houses of the wealthy; their children beg from the
-frequenters of Egeria’s groves. As you rightly said, Gallio, hostile to
-the human race and to themselves, they are ever fomenting sedition. A
-few years back, the followers of a certain Chrestus or Cherestus raised
-bloody riots among the Jews. The Porta Portuensis was put to fire and
-sword, and Cæsar was compelled to exercise severe repression, in spite
-of his forbearance. He expelled from Rome the leaders of the movement.”
-
-“Full well do I know it,” said Gallio. “Several of these exiles came to
-Cenchreæ, among others a Jew and a Jewess from the Pontus, who still
-dwell there, following some humble trade. I believe that they weave
-the coarse stuffs of Cilicia. I have not learnt anything noteworthy
-in regard to the partisans of Chrestus. As to Chrestus himself, I am
-ignorant of what has become of him, and whether he is still of this
-world.”
-
-“I am as ignorant on this score as you are, Gallio,” resumed Lucius
-Cassius, “and no one will ever know it. These vile wretches do not so
-much as attain celebrity in the annals of crime. Moreover, there are so
-many slaves of the name of Chrestus that it would be no easy matter to
-distinguish a particular one amid the throng.
-
-“It is but a trifling matter that the Jews should cause tumult within
-the low purlieus where their number and their lowliness protect
-them from supervision. They swarm through the city, they ingratiate
-themselves into families, and are everywhere a source of trouble. They
-shout in the Forum on behalf of the agitators who pay them, and these
-despicable foreigners incite the citizens to a hatred of one another.
-Too long have we endured their presence in popular assemblages, and
-for a long time now have public speakers avoided running counter to the
-opinion of these wretches, for fear of their insults. Obstinate in the
-observance of their barbarian law, they wish to subject others to it,
-and they find adepts among the Asiatics, and even among the Greeks.
-And, what is hardly to be credited, they impose their customs on the
-Latins themselves. There are, in the City, whole quarters where all the
-shops are closed on their Sabbath day. Oh the shame of Rome! And, while
-corrupting the lowly folk among whom they dwell, their kings, admitted
-into Cæsar’s palace, insolently practise their superstitions, and
-set to all citizens a detestable and noted example. Thus do the Jews
-inoculate Italy on all sides with an oriental venom.”
-
-Annæus Mela, who had travelled over the whole of the Roman world,
-sought to make his friends realise the extent of the evil they deplored.
-
-“The Jews corrupt the whole world,” he said. “There is not a Greek
-city, there are hardly any barbarian towns where work does not cease
-on the seventh day, where lamps are not lit, where their keeping of
-fast-days is not followed, and where the abstaining from the flesh of
-certain animals is not observed in imitation of them.
-
-“I have met in Alexandria an aged Jew not lacking in intelligence, who
-was even versed in Greek literature. He rejoiced at the progress of
-his religion in the Empire. ‘In proportion to the knowledge foreigners
-acquire of our laws,’ he told me, ‘do they find them pleasant, and they
-conform readily to them, both Romans and Greeks, those who dwell on
-the mainland and the people of the isles, Eastern and Western nations,
-Europe and Asia.’ The ancient one spoke perhaps with some degree of
-exaggeration. Still one sees a number of Greeks yielding to the beliefs
-of the Jews.”
-
-Apollodorus sharply denied such to be the case.
-
-“The Greeks who judaise,” he said, “are not to be met with except
-amid the dregs of the populace, and among the barbarians wandering
-about Greece, as brigands and tramps. The followers of the Stammerer
-may, however, have persuaded some few ignorant Greeks, by inducing
-them to believe that the ideas of Plato are to be found in the Hebrew
-scriptures. Such is the lie which they strive to spread.”
-
-“It is a fact,” replied Gallio, “that the Jews recognise an only,
-invisible, almighty god, who has created the earth. But they are far
-from worshipping him with wisdom. They publicly proclaim that this god
-is the enemy of all that is not Jewish, and that he will not tolerate
-in his temple either the effigies of the other gods, or the statue of
-Cæsar, or his own images. They regard as impious those who fashion
-out of perishable matter a god the image of man. Various reasons, some
-of them good and in harmony with the ideas which we conceive in regard
-to the divine providence, are adduced why this god should not be given
-expression to in marble or in bronze. But what can be thought, dear
-Apollodorus, of a god sufficiently inimical to the Republic that he
-will not admit in his sanctuary the statues of the Prince? How conceive
-a god who takes offence at the honours rendered to other gods? And
-what opinion can one have of a nation which credits its gods with like
-sentiments! The Jews look upon the gods of the Latins, Greeks and
-Barbarians as hostile gods, and they carry superstition to the point of
-believing that they possess a full and complete knowledge of God, one
-to which nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be subtracted.
-
-“As you are aware, my dear friends, it is not sufficient to tolerate
-every religion; we should honour them all, believe that all are sacred,
-that they are all coequal in the sincerity of those professing them,
-and that similar to arrows shot from various points towards the same
-goal, they all meet in the bosom of God. Alone the religion which only
-tolerates itself, cannot be endured. Were it to be permitted to spread,
-it would absorb all others. Nay, so unsociable a religion is not a
-religion, but rather an abligion, and no longer a bond that unites
-pious men, but one severing that sacred bond. It is the most impious
-of things. Can, indeed, a greater insult be offered to the deity than
-to worship it under a particular form, while at one and the same time
-dooming it to execration under all the other forms it assumes in the
-eyes of men?
-
-“What! Because I sacrifice to Jupiter crowned with a bushel, I am
-to forbid a foreigner from sacrificing to a Jupiter whose head of
-hair, similar to the flower of the hyacinth, drops uncrowned over his
-shoulders; and that, impious man that I should be, I should still
-consider myself a worshipper of Jupiter! No, by all means no! The
-religious man bound to the immortal gods is equally bound to all men by
-the religion which embraces both the earth and the heavens. Odious is
-the error of the Jews who believe they are pious in that they worship
-their god alone!”
-
-“They suffer themselves to be circumcised in his honour,” spoke Annæus
-Mela. “In order that this mutilation should not be noticed, it is
-necessary, when frequenting the public baths, for them to conceal that
-which should neither be made a display of, nor covered as a thing of
-shame. For it is alike ridiculous for a man to pride himself on, or
-to be ashamed of, what he shares in common with all men. We have good
-cause to dread, my friends, the progress of Judaic customs in the
-Empire. There is, however, no cause to fear that Romans and Greeks will
-adopt circumcision. It passes belief that this custom is likely to make
-its way among the Barbarians who, however, would feel the disgrace of
-it to a lesser degree, since they are, for the greater part, absurd
-enough to reckon as disgraceful for a man to appear before his fellow
-men in a state of nudity.”
-
-“While I think of it!” exclaimed Lollius. “When our gentle Canidia,
-the flower of the matrons of the Esquiline, sends her beautiful slaves
-to the hot baths, she compels them to wear drawers, as she grudges
-everybody even a view of what is most dear to her about their bodies.
-By Pollux, she will be the cause of their being taken for Jews, an
-insulting supposition, even for a slave.”
-
-Lucius Cassius resumed, revealing the irritation which consumed him:
-
-“I cannot say whether the Jewish folly will overtake the whole world.
-But it is past endurance that this madness should spread among the
-ignorant, that it should be tolerated in the Empire, that this fœtid
-race, which has descended to every form of turpitude, absurd and
-sordid in its manners and customs, impious and villainous in its laws,
-and execrated by the immortal gods, should be suffered to exist. The
-obscene Syrian is corrupting the City of Rome. We have cast aside with
-contempt our ancient usages, and the salutary methods of discipline
-of our ancestors. We no longer serve these masters of the earth, who
-conquered it for us. Which of us still believes in the haruspices? Who
-is there with any respect for the augurs? Who shows reverence to Mars
-and the divine Twins? Oh the sad neglect of our religious duties! Italy
-has repudiated her indigenous gods, and her tutelary genii. She is
-henceforth on all sides at the mercy of foreign superstitions, and is
-handed over defenceless to the impure horde of oriental priests. Alas,
-did Rome conquer the world only to be conquered by the Jews? Warnings
-have assuredly not been lacking. The overflowing of the Tiber and the
-grain famine are certainly not doubtful manifestations of the divine
-ire. No day passes without its sinister presage. The earth quakes, the
-sun is veiled, while lightning flashes in a clear sky. Wonders follow
-upon wonders. Birds of ill omen have been seen to perch on the summit
-of the Capitol. An ox has been heard to speak on the Etruscan shore.
-Women have brought forth monsters; a wailing voice has sounded amid the
-recreations of the theatre. The statue of Victory has dropped the reins
-of her chariot.”
-
-“The hosts of the celestial palaces,” remarked Lollius, “have strange
-ways of making themselves heard. If they desire a little more incense,
-or sigh for a few more fat offerings, let them say so plainly, instead
-of expressing their wishes by means of thunder, clouds, crows, bronze
-statues, and two-headed children. Moreover, you must admit, Lucius,
-theirs is a far too one-sided part when they presage the evils
-threatening us, since, in the natural course of things, not a day goes
-by but what brings some individual or public misfortune.”
-
-Gallio exhibited distress at the sorrows of Cassius.
-
-“Claudius,” he remarked, “Claudius, although he is always dozing, has
-deeply felt this great peril. He has complained to the Senate of the
-contempt into which ancient usages have been suffered to fall. Alarmed
-at the progress of foreign superstitions, the Senate has, on his
-recommendation, re-established haruspices. But it is not sufficient
-that the observance of the ceremonial rites of worship should be
-restored; rather is it necessary once more to instil into men’s hearts
-their primitive purity. The souls of virtuous men constitute the proper
-shrine of the gods in this world. Give a home within your hearts to
-past virtues once more, simplicity, good faith, love of the public
-welfare, and the gods will immediately re-enter them. You shall then
-yourselves be temples and altars.”
-
-He spoke, and, taking leave of his friends, entered his litter, which,
-for some little time past, had been awaiting him near a clump of
-myrtle-bushes to convey him to the tribunal.
-
-His friends had risen from their seats, and leaving the grounds,
-followed leisurely behind him under a double portico, so disposed as to
-afford shadow at all hours of the day, and leading from the walls of
-the villa to the basilica where the proconsul dispensed justice.
-
-By the way, Lucius Cassius expressed to Mela his regret at the oblivion
-into which the ancient methods of discipline had fallen.
-
-Marcus Lollius, placing a hand on the shoulder of Apollodorus, said:
-
-“It seems to me that neither our gentle Gallio nor Mela, nor even
-Cassius, have stated their reasons for their deep hatred of the Jews.
-I think I know, and I am going to tell you, most dear Apollodorus.
-The Romans who offer up to the gods a white sow ornamented with white
-bands, execrate the Jews who refuse to partake of pork. It is not in
-vain that the fates sent to the pious Æneas a white female boar as a
-presage. Had the gods not studded with oaks the wild realms of Evander
-and Turnus, Rome would not be to-day the mistress of the world. The
-acorns of Latium fattened the swine whose flesh has alone appeased
-the insatiable hunger of the magnanimous descendants of Remus. Our
-Italians, whose bodies are built on boars and pigs, feel offended
-at the proud abstinence of the Jews, who persist in casting aside as
-unclean victuals the fat sounders, beloved of old Cato, which furnish
-food to the masters of the Universe.”
-
-Thus discoursing pleasantly, and enjoying the kindly shade, the four
-friends reached the furthermost end of the portico, when of a sudden
-the Forum appeared before them in a glitter of light.
-
-At that early hour, it was all astir with the coming and going of
-noisy crowds. In the centre of the square stood a bronze Minerva on a
-pedestal on which were sculptured the Muses, and to the right and to
-the left stood a Mercury and a bronze Apollo, the work of Hermogenes of
-Cythera. A Neptune with a green beard arose from the centre of a basin.
-At the feet of the god, a dolphin vomited forth water.
-
-The Forum was surrounded in all directions by monuments, the
-high columns and the arches of which revealed the Roman style of
-architecture. Facing the portico by way of which Mela and his friends
-had come, the Propylæ, surmounted by two gilded chariots, formed the
-boundary of the public square, and led, by way of marble steps, to the
-broad and straight road of the harbour of Lechæum. On either side of
-these heroic gates rose in kingly fashion the painted pediments of the
-sanctuaries, the Pantheon, and the temple of Artemis of Ephesus. The
-temple of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, dominated the Forum, and
-looked upon the sea.
-
-Between it and the basilica ran an insignificant little street. The
-building rose over two stories of arcades supported by pillars flanked
-with Doric half-columns forming a square. The Roman style, which
-stamped its character upon all the other buildings of the city, was
-patent. There remained of the pristine Corinth nothing but the calcined
-ruins of an old temple.
-
-The lower arcades of the basilica were open and served as shops
-to sellers of fruit, vegetables, oil, wine and fried foods, to
-bird-fanciers, jewellers, booksellers, and barbers. Money-changers sat
-at little tables laden with gold and silver coins. From the gloomy
-hollow of these stalls emerged shouts, laughter, hailings, the noise
-of disputes, and pungent odours. On the marble steps, wherever their
-slabs were tinted blue by the shade, loafers shook dice or tossed
-knuckle-bones, suitors paced to and fro with anxious mien, sailors
-gravely looked for the pleasures upon which they should squander
-their wages, while quidnuncs read news from Rome written for them
-by frivolous Greeks. Blended with this crowd of Corinthians and
-foreigners, numerous blind beggars persistently obtruded themselves, as
-well as callow and rouged youths, matchsellers and crippled sailors
-from whose necks depended a picture of the wreck of their ships. Doves
-flew in flocks from the roof of the basilica down to the large open
-spaces on which the sun shone, and picked up grain between the cracks
-of the heated flagstones.
-
-A girl of twelve, dark and velvety as a pansy of Xanthus, placed on
-the ground her little brother, as yet unable to walk, put beside him a
-chipped bowl filled with porridge and a wooden spoon, saying to him:
-
-“Eat, Comatas, eat and keep quiet, or that red horse will have you.”
-
-Then, holding an obolus in her hand, she ran towards the fish-dealer,
-whose wrinkled face and naked breast, the colour of saffron, appeared
-amid baskets lined with seaweed.
-
-While she was thus engaged, a dove hovering about the little Comatas
-got its talons entangled in the child’s locks. The boy began to cry,
-and to call his sister to his help, screaming in a voice choked with
-sobs:
-
-“Joessa! Joessa!”
-
-But Joessa heard him not. She was rummaging in the old man’s baskets,
-amid the fish and the shell-fish, for something that would improve the
-taste of her stale bread. Naturally she did not pick out a peacock-fish
-or a smaris, whose flesh is most delicate, but which cost money. She
-brought away in the hollow of her gown, which she had tucked up, three
-handfuls of sea-urchins and sticklebacks.
-
-Meanwhile little Comatas, his mouth wide open, and drinking his own
-tears, was still bawling:
-
-“Joessa! Joessa!”
-
-Unlike Jove’s eagle, the bird of Venus did not carry off little Comatas
-into the glorious skies. It left him on the earth, taking with it in
-its flight, between its pink talons, three golden hairs from his matted
-locks.
-
-The child, with cheeks glistening with tears and begrimed with dust,
-clenching his wooden spoon in his tiny fists, was sobbing beside his
-overturned bowl.
-
-Annæus Mela, followed by his three friends, had reached the top of the
-basilica’s steps. Alike heedless of the noise and stir of the idle
-multitude, he was imparting information to Cassius in regard to the
-future renovation of the universe.
-
-“On a day determined by the gods,” he said, “the things existing
-to-day, whose order and disposition claim our attention, will be
-destroyed. Stars will clash with stars, all matters composing the
-earth, the air, and the waters will be consumed in one conflagration.
-Human souls, imperceptible _débris_ amid the universal destruction,
-will be resolved anew into their primitive elements. An entirely new
-world....”
-
-As he uttered the words, Annæus Mela stumbled against a sleeper
-stretched out in the shade. It was an old man who had artistically
-gathered about his dust-covered body the ragged remnants of his cloak.
-His wallet, his sandals, and his stick lay beside him.
-
-The proconsul’s brother, ever courteous and kindly, even to men of the
-lowliest class, was about to apologise, but the recumbent individual
-did not allow him time to do so.
-
-“Try and see where you put your feet, you brute,” he exclaimed, “and
-give alms to the philosopher Posocharis.”
-
-“I perceive a wallet and a stick,” smilingly replied the Roman, “but so
-far I do not see any philosopher.”
-
-Just as he was about to toss a piece of silver to Posocharis,
-Apollodorus stayed his hand, saying:
-
-“Do not give him anything, Annæus. It is not a philosopher; nay, not
-even a man.”
-
-“But I am one,” replied Mela, “if I give him money, and he is a man if
-he takes this coin. For, alone among all animals, man does both these
-things. And can you not see that for the sake of a small coin I satisfy
-myself that I am a better man than he? Your master teaches that he who
-gives is better than he who receives.”
-
-Posocharis took the coin. Then he hurled coarse invectives at Annæus
-Mela and his companions, stigmatising them as arrogant and as
-debauchees, and referring them to the jugglers and harlots who walked
-past them with undulating hips. Then, baring to the navel his hairy
-body, and drawing over his face his tattered cloak, he once more
-stretched himself out at full length on the pavement.
-
-“Would it not interest you,” asked Lollius of his companions, “to hear
-those Jews expound their dispute in the prætorium?”
-
-They replied that they entertained no such curiosity, preferring to
-stroll under the portico, while waiting for the proconsul, who would
-doubtless not be long in coming out.
-
-“I am with you, my friends,” said Lollius. “We shall not miss anything
-very interesting.”
-
-“Moreover,” he went on to say, “the Jews who have come from Cenchreæ to
-accompany the suitors are not all in the basilica. Here comes one who
-is recognisable by his beaked nose and his forked beard. He is in as
-fine a state of frenzy as Pythia herself.”
-
-Lollius was pointing with both look and finger at a lean stranger,
-poorly clad, who was vociferating under the portico, in the midst of a
-railing mob.
-
-“Men of Corinth, you place a vain trust in your wisdom, which is naught
-but madness. You follow blindly the precepts of your philosophers who
-teach you death, and not life. You do not observe the natural law, and
-in order to punish you, God has delivered you unto unnatural vices....”
-
-A sailor, who had just joined the group of spectators, recognised the
-man, for, with a shrug of the shoulders, he muttered:
-
-“Why, ’tis Stephanas, the Jew of Cenchreæ, who brings once more some
-extraordinary piece of news from his trip to the skies, into which he
-ascended, if we are to credit him.”
-
-And Stephanas was teaching the people.
-
-“The Christian is not bound by law and concupiscence. He is exempt from
-damnation through the mercy of God, who sent his only son to assume a
-sinful body, in order to destroy sin. But ye shall only be delivered
-if, breaking with the flesh, you live according to the spirit.
-
-“The Jews observe the laws, and believe that they are saved by their
-works. But it is their faith which saves them, and not their works. Of
-what use is it to them to be circumcised in fact, if their heart is
-uncircumcised?
-
-“Men of Corinth, glory in the faith, and ye shall be incorporated into
-the family of Abraham.”
-
-The mob was beginning to laugh and jeer at these obscure utterances.
-Still the Jew continued prophesying in hollow tones. He was announcing
-a great manifestation of wrath and the all-destroying fire which was to
-consume the earth.
-
-“And these things shall come to pass in my lifetime,” he cried, “and
-I shall witness them with mine own eyes. The hour has come for us to
-awaken from our sleep. The night has passed, and the day is dawning.
-The Saints will rejoice in Heaven, and those who have not believed in
-Jesus crucified shall perish.”
-
-Then, promising the resurrection of the body, he invoked Anastasis,
-amid the jeers of the hilarious crowd.
-
-Just then, a leather-lunged man, Milo the baker, a member of the
-Corinthian Senate, who for some time past had been listening to the Jew
-with impatience, came up to him, took him by the arm, and shaking him
-roughly said:
-
-“Cease, you wretch, spouting idle words. All this is children’s fables
-and nonsense fit to capture a woman’s mind. How canst thou, on the
-strength of thy dreams, indulge in such foolery, casting aside all
-that is beautiful, and taking pleasure in what is evil only, without
-even deriving any advantage from thy hatred? Renounce your strange
-phantasies, your perverse designs, your gloomy forebodings, lest a god
-abandon you to the crows, to punish you for your imprecations against
-this city and the Empire.”
-
-The citizens applauded Milo’s speech.
-
-“He speaks truly,” they shouted. “Those Syrians have but one design:
-they seek to weaken our fatherland. They are the enemies of Cæsar.”
-
-A number of them abstracted from the fruiterers’ stalls gourds and
-locust-beans, others picked up oyster-shells, and flung them at the
-apostle, who was still vaticinating.
-
-Thrown down the steps of the portico, he wended his way through the
-Forum, shouting, amid a storm of hooting, insults, and blows, pelted
-with dirt, bleeding, and half naked:
-
-“My Master has said it, we are the sweepings of the world.”
-
-And he exulted in his joy.
-
-The children pursued him on the Cenchreæ road, yelling.
-
-“Anastasis! Anastasis!”
-
-Posocharis was not sleeping. Hardly had the friends of the proconsul
-gone away, when he raised himself upon his elbow. Seated on a step,
-a short distance from him, the swarthy Joessa was crunching between
-her teeth the shell of a sea-urchin. The cynic hailed her and showed
-her the glittering piece of silver he had just received. Then, having
-readjusted his rags and tatters, he rose, slipped his feet into his
-sandals, picked up his stick and wallet, and went down the steps.
-Joessa went up to him, relieved him of his wallet full of holes, which
-she gravely placed on her shoulder, as if to carry it as an offering
-to the august Cypris, and followed the old man.
-
-Apollodorus saw them taking the Cenchreæ road with the object of
-reaching the cemetery of the slaves, and the place of execution
-conspicuous from afar by the swarms of crows which hovered over the
-crosses. The philosopher and the young girl knew there a clump of
-arbutus always deserted, and favourable to dalliance with Eros.
-
-At the sight of this, Apollodorus, pulling Mela by the flap of his
-toga, remarked:
-
-“Just look. No sooner has that cur received your alms than he decoys a
-child, in order to mate with her.”
-
-“Which goes to prove,” answered Mela, “that I gave money to the kind of
-man who knows full well what to do with it.”
-
-Meanwhile, the brat Comatas, squatting on the heated flagstone and
-sucking his thumbs, was laughing at the sight of a pebble glistening in
-the sun.
-
-“Besides,” resumed Mela, “you must admit, Apollodorus, that the way
-in which Posocharis makes love is not a bit philosophical. The dog is
-assuredly wiser than our young debauchees of the Palatine, who love
-amid perfumes, tears, and laughter, with languor or with passion...”
-
-As he spoke, a hoarse clamour arose in the prætorium, deafening to the
-ears of the Greek and the three Romans.
-
-“By Pollux!” exclaimed Lollius, “the suitors whose case our friend
-Gallio is trying are shouting like dockers, and it seems to me that
-together with their growls a stench of sweat and onions reaches us.”
-
-“Nothing is more true,” quoth Apollodorus. “But, were Posocharis a
-philosopher instead of the dog he is, far from sacrificing to the Venus
-of the cross-roads, he would flee from the whole breed of women, and
-attach himself solely to some youth, whose eternal comeliness he would
-contemplate merely as the expression of an inner beauty more noble and
-more precious.”
-
-“Love,” resumed Mela, “is an abject passion. It disturbs the reason,
-destroys noble impulses, and diverts the most elevated ideas to the
-vilest cares. It has no place in a sensible mind. As the poet Euripides
-teaches us....”
-
-Mela did not finish his sentence. Preceded by lictors, who pushed the
-crowd aside, the proconsul came out of the basilica, and went up to his
-friends.
-
-“I have not been away from you long,” he said. “The case which I was
-summoned to try was as meagre as could be, and ridiculous in the
-extreme. On entering the prætorium, I found it invaded by a motley
-crowd of the Jews who, in their sordid shops along the wharves of the
-harbour of Cenchreæ, sell carpets, stuffs, and petty articles of
-silver and gold jewellery to the sailors. The atmosphere was filled
-with their shrill yelping, and with a pungent odour of goat. It was
-with difficulty that I could grasp the meaning of their words, and it
-cost me an effort to understand that one of those Jews, Sosthenes by
-name, who styled himself the chief of the synagogue, was charging with
-impiety another Jew, the latter, repulsively ugly, bandy-legged, and
-blear-eyed, and named Paul or Saul, a native of Tarsus, who has for
-some time past been exercising in Corinth his trade of weaver, and has
-gone into partnership with certain Jews expelled from Rome, for the
-weaving of tent-cloths and Cilician garments in goat-hair. They all
-spoke at once, and in very bad Greek. I made out, however, that this
-Sosthenes imputed as a crime to this Paul that he had entered the house
-wherein the Jews of Corinth are in the habit of meeting every Saturday,
-and had spoken with the object of seducing his co-religionists, and of
-persuading them to worship their god in a fashion contrary to their
-law. I had heard enough. So having, not without difficulty, silenced
-them, I informed them that had they come to me to complain of some
-matter of wrong or of some deed of violence wherefrom they might have
-suffered injury, I should have listened to them with patience, and
-with all the necessary attention; but, since their case turned simply
-upon a question of words, and a disagreement in regard to their law,
-it concerned me not, and that I could not be judge of such matters. I
-thereupon dismissed them with these words: ‘Settle your quarrels among
-yourselves, as best you see fit.’”
-
-“What did they say to that?” asked Cassius. “Did they submit with good
-grace to so wise a decision?”
-
-“It is not in the nature of brutes,” replied the proconsul, “to relish
-wisdom. Those fellows greeted my decision with harsh murmurings of
-which, as you may well imagine, I took no notice. I left them shouting
-and struggling at the foot of the tribunal. From what I could see,
-most of the blows fell to the plaintiff. He will be left for dead, if
-my lictors do not interfere. These Jews from the harbour are great
-ignoramuses, and like most ignorant people, not enjoying the faculty of
-supporting with arguments the truth of what they believe, they know no
-other argument than kicks and fisticuffs.
-
-“The friends of that little deformed and blear-eyed Jew named Paul seem
-to be particularly clever at that kind of controversy. Ye gods! How
-they got the better of the chief of the synagogue, raining blows on
-him, and trampling him under their feet! But I do not doubt that had
-the friends of Sosthenes been the stronger of the two parties, they
-would have treated Paul as the friends of Paul treated Sosthenes.”
-
-Mela congratulated the proconsul.
-
-“You were right, brother mine, in sending those wretched litigants
-about their business.”
-
-“Could I do otherwise?” replied Gallio. “How could I have decided
-between that Sosthenes and that Paul who are the one as stupid and
-as rabid as the other?... If I treat them with contempt, do not, my
-friends, think that is because they are poor and humble, because
-Sosthenes reeks of salted fish, or for the reason that Paul’s fingers
-have become worn in weaving carpets and tent-cloth. No, Philemon and
-Baucis were poor, yet worthy of the highest honours. The gods did not
-disdain being entertained at their frugal board. Wisdom raises a slave
-above his master. Nay, a virtuous slave is superior to the gods. If
-he is their equal in wisdom, he surpasses them in the beauty of the
-accomplishment. Those Jews are to be despised simply because they are
-boorish, and that no image of the divinity is reflected in them.”
-
-A smile overspread the countenance of Marcus Lollius at these word.
-
-“Truly, the gods,” he said, “would hardly frequent the Syrians who
-infest the harbours, amid the sellers of fruit and the strumpets.”
-
-“The Barbarians themselves,” resumed the proconsul, “possess some
-knowledge of the gods. Not to mention the Egyptians, who, in the olden
-days, were men filled with piety, there is not in wealthy Asia a
-nation which has not worshipped Diana, Vulcan, Juno, or the mother of
-the Æneædes. They give these divinities strange names, confused forms,
-and sometimes offer up to them human sacrifices, but they recognise
-their power. Alone are the Jews ignorant of the providence of the gods.
-I know not whether that Paul, whom the Syrians also call Saul, is as
-superstitious as the others, and as obstinate in his errors. I know
-not what obscure idea he conceives of the immortal gods, and to tell
-the truth, I am not concerned to know it. What is there to be learned
-of those who know nothing! It amounts, to put it plainly, to educating
-oneself in ignorance. I gathered from some of his confused expressions
-in my presence and in reply to his accuser, that he joins issue with
-the priests of his nation, that he repudiates the religion of the
-Jews, and that he worships Orpheus under an assumed name which has
-escaped me. What makes me suppose this, is that he speaks with respect
-of a god, or rather of a hero, who is supposed to have descended into
-Hades, and to have reascended into the heavens, after having wandered
-among the pallid shades of the dead. He may perhaps have set himself
-to worship some subterranean Mercury. I should, however, feel more
-inclined to believe that he worships Adonis, for I think I heard him
-say that, following in the steps of the women of Byblos, he wept over
-the sufferings and the death of a god.
-
-“These youthful gods, who die and come to life again, abound on Asiatic
-soil. The Syrian courtesans have brought several of them to Rome, and
-these celestial youths please, more than is proper, our respectable
-women. Our matrons do not blush to celebrate their mysterious rites in
-private. My Julia, so prudent and so self-contained, has repeatedly
-asked me how much should be believed of them. ‘What kind of a god,’
-have I answered her with indignation, ‘what can be the god who takes
-delight in the stealthy homage of a married dame? A woman should know
-no other friends than those of her husband. And do not the gods stand
-first in order among our friends?’”
-
-“Does not this man of Tarsus,” inquired the philosopher Apollodorus,
-“pay reverence rather to Typhon, whom the Egyptians call Sethon? It
-is said that a god with an ass’s head is shown honour by a certain
-Jewish sect. This god can be no other than Typhon, and I should not be
-surprised if the weavers of Cenchreæ held a secret intercourse with the
-Immortal, who, according to our gentle Marcus, committed so disgusting
-an outrage on the old woman who sold cakes.”
-
-“I know not,” resumed Gallio. “They do indeed say that a number of
-Syrians meet to celebrate in secret the worship of a god with a
-donkey’s head. It may be that Paul is one of them. But what matters
-the Adonis, the Mercury, the Orpheus, or the Typhon of that Jew? He
-will never reign over any but the female fortune-tellers, the usurers,
-and the sordid traders who spoil the sailors in seaports. At the very
-utmost will he be able to win over, in the suburbs of the big cities, a
-few handfuls of slaves.”
-
-“Oho! Oho!” exclaimed Marcus Lollius in an outburst of laughter, “can
-you see that hideous Paul founding a religion of slaves? By Castor,
-it would indeed be a miraculous novelty! Should perchance the god of
-the slaves (may Jove avert the omen!) climb up into Olympus and expel
-therefrom the gods of the empire, what would he do in turn? In what way
-would he exercise his power over the astonished world? I should enjoy
-seeing him at work. He would no doubt keep up the Saturnalia during the
-entire course of the year. He would open to gladiators the road to the
-highest honours, establish the prostitutes of the Suburra in the temple
-of Vesta, and perhaps make of some wretched straggling village in Syria
-the capital of the world.”
-
-Lollius might have followed up his jest for some time had Gallio not
-interrupted him.
-
-“Marcus,” he said, “do not entertain the hope of witnessing these
-marvellous novelties. Although men are capable of stupendous acts of
-folly, it is not a little Jew weaver who could seduce them with his bad
-Greek and his tales about a Syrian Orpheus. The slaves’ god could but
-foment uprisings and servile wars, which would be promptly put down in
-blood, and he would soon perish himself, together with his worshippers,
-in an amphitheatre, under the teeth of wild beasts, to the plaudits of
-the Roman people.
-
-“Enough of Paul and Sosthenes. Their mind would not be of any help to
-us in the quest we were engaged upon ere they so untowardly interrupted
-us. We were seeking to know the future the gods have in store for us,
-not for you, dear friends, or for me in particular (for we are prepared
-to endure all that is to be), but for the fatherland and for the human
-race which we love and towards which we feel kindly. It is not that Jew
-weaver, with his inflamed eyelids, who could tell us, whatever Marcus
-may think, the name of the god who is to dethrone Jupiter.”
-
-Gallio broke off his speech to dismiss the lictors, who stood
-motionless in line before him, shouldering their fasces.
-
-“We require neither the rods nor the axes,” he remarked with a smile.
-“Speech is our only weapon. May the day come when the universe shall
-know no others. If you are not tired, my friends, let us walk towards
-the Pirene fountain. We shall find midway an old fig-tree under which,
-so it is related, the betrayed Medea meditated her cruel revenge. The
-Corinthians hold the tree in reverence, in memory of that jealous
-queen, and suspend votive tablets from its branches, for Medea never
-brought them but good. It has cleft the earth with its branches,
-which have thrown out roots, and it is still crowned with a luxuriant
-foliage. Seated in its shade, we can while away time with conversation
-till our bath-hour.”
-
-The children, weary of pursuing Stephanas, were playing at
-knuckle-bones by the roadside. The apostle was striding along rapidly,
-when he came across, near the place of execution, a band of Jews, who
-had come up from Cenchreæ to ascertain the judgment rendered by the
-proconsul in regard to the synagogue. They were friends of Sosthenes,
-and were greatly irritated against the Jew of Tarsus and his adherents
-because they sought to change the law. Noticing the man, who was
-wiping with his sleeve his eyes blinded with blood, they thought they
-recognised him, and one of them, pulling him by the beard, asked him if
-he were not Stephanas, the companion of Paul.
-
-Proudly he answered:
-
-“Behold him!”
-
-He was quickly thrown to the ground, and trampled under foot. The Jews
-were picking up stones and shouting:
-
-“He is a blasphemer! Stone him!”
-
-A couple of the most zealous tore up the milestone sunk by the Romans,
-and were endeavouring to heave it at him. The stones fell with a dull
-thud on the skinny bones of the apostle, who yelled:
-
-“Oh the delight of these wounds! Oh the joy of these sufferings! Oh the
-refreshment of this torture! I behold Jesus.”
-
-A few steps farther off, under an arbutus, and to the murmurings of a
-spring, old Posocharis was pressing in his arms the smooth flanks of
-Joessa. Annoyed at the disturbance, he growled with a choking voice,
-with head buried in the hair of the young girl:
-
-“Begone, you low brutes, and do not trouble a philosopher’s pastime.”
-
-After a few minutes, a centurion who was passing along the now deserted
-road, raised Stephanas from the ground, made him swallow a mouthful of
-wine, and gave him linen wherewith to bandage his wounds.
-
-While this was going on, Gallio, sitting with his friends under Medea’s
-tree, was saying:
-
-“If you wish to know the successor of the master of gods and men,
-meditate the words of the poet:
-
-    “‘Jove’s spouse shall bring forth a son more powerful than
-    his father.’
-
-“This line designates, not the august Juno, but the most illustrious
-among the noble women with whom consorted the Olympian who so often
-changed his form and his loves. It seems to me assured that the
-government of the universe is to fall to the lot of Hercules. This
-opinion has long since taken root in my mind, by reasons derived not
-only from the poets, but from philosophers and men of science. I have,
-so to speak, greeted by anticipation the accession of the son of
-Alcmene, in the climax of my tragedy of _Hercules on Œta_, ending with
-the following words:
-
-    “‘Hail, great conqueror of monsters, and pacifier of the world;
-    be propitious unto us! Cast thy gaze upon the earth, and if
-    some monster of a new kind strike terror into mankind, destroy
-    it with a thunderbolt. Better than thy father wilt thou know
-    how to hurl thunder.’
-
-“I augur favourably of the coming reign of Hercules. During his life
-upon earth, he displayed a spirit patient and inclined to elevated
-thoughts. When the time comes for thunder to arm his hand, he will not
-suffer a new Caius to govern the Empire with impunity. Virtue, ancient
-simplicity, courage, innocence, and peace will reign with him. Thus do
-I prophesy.”
-
-And Gallio, having risen, took leave of his friends with these words:
-
-“Fare ye well, and love me.”
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-As Nicole Langelier came to the end of his reading, the birds heralded
-by Giacomo Boni filled the deserted Forum with their friendly cries.
-
-The sky was spreading over the Roman ruins the ash-tinted veil of
-evening; the young laurel-bushes planted along the Via Sacra lifted up
-into the diaphanous atmosphere their branches black as antique bronzes,
-while the flanks of the Palatine were clothed in azure.
-
-“Langelier,” spoke M. Goubin, who was not easily deceived, “you did
-not invent that story. The suit brought by Sosthenes against St. Paul
-before Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, is to be found in the _Acts of the
-Apostles_.”
-
-Nichole Langelier readily admitted the fact.
-
-“The story is told,” he said, “in chapter xviii., and occupies verses
-12 to 17 inclusively, which I am able to read to you, for I copied them
-on to a sheet of my manuscript.”
-
-Whereupon he read:
-
-    “‘12. And when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made
-    insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to
-    the judgment seat,
-
-    “‘13. Saying, This _fellow_ persuadeth men to worship God
-    contrary to the law.
-
-    “‘14. And when Paul was now about to open _his_ mouth, Gallio
-    said unto the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked
-    lewdness, O _ye_ Jews, reason would that I should bear with you:
-
-    “‘15. But if it be a question of words and names, and _of_ your
-    law, look ye _to it_; for I will be no judge of such _matters_.
-
-    “‘16. And he drove them from the judgment seat.
-
-    “‘17. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of
-    the synagogue, and beat _him_ before the judgment seat. And
-    Gallio cared for none of those things.’
-
-“I have not invented anything,” added Langelier. “Little is known of
-Annæus Mela, and of Gallio, his brother. It is, however, certain that
-they were numbered among the most intelligent men of their day. When
-Achaia, a senatorial province under Augustus, an imperial one under
-Tiberius, was restored to the Senate by Claudius, Gallio was sent
-thither as proconsul. He was doubtless indebted for the post to the
-influence of his brother Seneca; it is possible, however, that he was
-selected for his knowledge of Greek literature, and as a man agreeable
-to the Athenian professors, whose intellects the Romans admired. He
-was highly educated. He had written a book on physiological subjects,
-and, it is believed, some few tragedies. His works are all lost, unless
-something from his pen is to be met with in the collection of tragic
-recitations attributed without sufficient reasons to his brother the
-philosopher. I have assumed that he was a Stoic, and that he held in
-many respects the same opinions as his illustrious brother. But, while
-placing in his mouth words of virtue and rectitude, I have guarded
-against attributing any settled doctrine to him. The Romans of those
-days blended the ideas of Epicurus with those of Zenon. I was not
-incurring any great risk of being mistaken, when investing Gallio with
-this eclecticism. I have represented him as a kindly man. He was that,
-assuredly. Seneca has said of him that no one loved him in a lukewarm
-fashion. His gentleness was universal. He aspired to honours.
-
-“Quite the contrary, his brother Annæus Mela held aloof from them. We
-have on that point the testimony of Seneca the philosopher, as well as
-that of Tacitus. When Helvia, the mother of the three Senecas, lost
-her husband, the most famed of her sons indited a small philosophical
-treatise for her. In a certain part of this work, he exhorts her to
-consider, in order to reconcile her to life, that there remain unto
-her sons like Gallio and Mela, differing as to character, but equally
-worthy of her affection.
-
-“‘Cast thine eyes upon my brothers,’ he says, or words to that effect.
-‘Both shall, by the diversity of their virtues, charm thy weary
-moments. Gallio has attained honours through his talents. Mela has
-despised them in his wisdom. Derive enjoyment from the regard in which
-the one is held, from the calm of the other, and from the love of both.
-I know the inner sentiments of my brothers. Gallio seeks in dignities
-an ornament for thyself. Mela embraces a gentle and peaceful life in
-order to devote himself to thee.’
-
-“A child during the principality of Nero, Tacitus did not know the
-Senecas. He merely collected what was currently said about them in his
-day. He states that if Mela held aloof from honours, it was through
-a refinement of ambition, and, a simple Roman knight, to rival the
-influence of the consular officers. After having administered in person
-the vast estates he possessed in Boetica, Mela came to Rome, and had
-himself appointed administrator of Nero’s estate. The conclusion was
-drawn therefrom that he was shrewd in matters of business, and he was
-even suspected of not being as disinterested as he wished to appear.
-That may be. The Senecas, while parading their contempt for riches,
-were possessed of great wealth, and it is very hard to believe the
-tutor of Nero when, amid the luxury of his furniture and his gardens,
-he represents himself as faithful to his beloved poverty. Still, the
-three sons of Helvia were not ordinary souls. Mela had of Atilla,
-his wife, a son, Lucan the poet. It would seem that Lucan’s talent
-reflected great lustre on his father’s name. Letters were then held in
-high honour, and eloquence and poetry ranked above all things.
-
-“Seneca, Mela, Lucan, and Gallio perished with the accomplices of
-Piso. Seneca the philosopher was already an aged man. Tacitus, who
-had not been a witness of his death, has portrayed the scene for us.
-We know how Nero’s tutor opened his veins while in his bath, and how
-his young wife Paulina protested that she would die with him, and by
-a similar death. By Nero’s order, Paulina’s wrists, which had been
-opened at the veins, were bandaged. She lived, preserving thereafter a
-deathly pallor. Tacitus records that young Lucan, whilst under torture,
-denounced his mother. Even if there were confirmation of this infamous
-deed, the blame for it should be laid to the tortures he underwent.
-But there is certainly one reason for not believing it. If indeed pain
-extorted from Lucan the names of several of the conspirators, he did
-not pronounce that of Atilla, since Atilla was not molested at a time
-when every information was blindly credited.
-
-“After the death of Lucan, Mela, with too great a haste and diligence,
-seized on the inheritance of his son. A friend of the young poet, who
-doubtless coveted the inheritance, became the accuser of Mela. It was
-alleged that the father had been initiated into the secret of the
-conspiracy, and a forged letter of Lucan was brought forth. Nero, after
-having read it, ordered it to be shown to Mela. Following the example
-set by his brother and so many of Nero’s victims, Mela caused his veins
-to be opened, after having bequeathed a large sum of money to the
-freedmen of Cæsar, in order to secure the remainder of his fortunes to
-the unhappy Atilla. Gallio did not survive his two brothers; he took
-his own life.
-
-“Such was the tragic end of these charming and cultured men. I have
-made two of them, Gallio and Mela, speak in Corinth. Mela was a great
-traveller. His son Lucan, while yet a child, was on a visit to Athens,
-at the time Gallio was proconsul of Achaia. There is therefore some
-show of reason for saying that Mela was then with his brother in
-Corinth. I have supposed that two young Romans of illustrious birth,
-and a philosopher of the Areopagus, accompanied the proconsul. In so
-doing, I have not taken too great a liberty, since the intendants, the
-procurators, the proprætors, and the proconsuls whom the Emperor and
-the Senate respectively sent to govern the provinces, always had about
-themselves the sons of great families, who came to instruct themselves
-in the management of public affairs under their guidance, and that of
-men of keen intellect like my Apollodorus, more frequently freedmen
-acting as their secretaries. Lastly, I conceived the idea that at
-the moment St. Paul was being brought before a Roman tribunal, the
-proconsul and his friends were conversing freely about the most varied
-subjects, art, philosophy, religion, and politics, and that there
-pierced the various topics absorbing their interest a deep anxiety as
-to the future. There is indeed some likelihood that on that very day,
-just as well as on any other, they may have sought to discover the
-future destiny of Rome and the world. Gallio and Mela stood among the
-most elevated and open intellects of the day. Minds of such a calibre
-are at all times inclined to delve into the present and the past for
-the conditions of the future. I have noticed in the most learned and
-well-informed men whom I have known, to name but Renan and Berthelot,
-a pronounced tendency to interject at haphazard into a conversation
-outlines of rational utopias and scientific forecasts.”
-
-“Here then we have,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “one of the best educated
-men of his day, a man versed in philosophic speculation, trained in
-the conduct of public affairs, and who was of as open and broad a mind
-as could be that of a Roman such as Gallio, the brother of Seneca, the
-ornament and light of his century. He is concerned about the future,
-he seeks to grasp the movement which is most affecting the world, and
-he tries to fathom the destiny of the Empire and the gods. Just then,
-by a unique stroke of fortune, he comes across St. Paul; the future
-he is in quest of passes by him, and he sees it not. What an example
-of the blindness which strikes, in the very presence of an unexpected
-revelation, the most enlightened minds and the keenest intellects!”
-
-“I would have you observe, my dear friend,” replied Nicole Langelier,
-“that it was not a very easy matter for Gallio to converse with St.
-Paul. It is not easy to conceive how they could possibly have exchanged
-ideas. St. Paul had trouble in expressing himself, and it was with
-great difficulty that he made himself intelligible to the folk who
-lived and thought like himself. He had never spoken word of mouth to
-any cultured man.
-
-“He was nowise capable of indicating a train of thought and of
-following those of an interlocutor. He was ignorant of Greek science.
-Gallio, accustomed to the conversation of educated people, had long
-since trained his reason to debate. He knew not the maxims of the
-rabbis. What then could these two men have said to each other?
-
-“Not that it was impossible for a Jew to converse with a Roman. The
-Herods enjoyed a mode of expression which was agreeable to Tiberius
-and Caligula. Flavius Josephus and Queen Berenice discoursed in terms
-pleasing to Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem. We know that bejewelled
-Jews were at all times to be found in company of the antisemites. They
-were _meschoumets_ (accursed unbelievers--anathema to Paul). Paul was
-a _nĕbi_ (prophet). This fiery and haughty Syrian, disdainful of the
-worldly goods sought for by all men, thirsting after poverty, ambitious
-of insults and humiliations, rejoicing in suffering, was merely able to
-proclaim his sombre and inflamed visions, his hatred of life and of the
-beautiful, his absurd outbursts of anger, and his insane charity. Apart
-from this, he had nothing to say. In truth, I can discover one subject
-only on which he might have agreed with the proconsul of Achaia. ’Tis
-Nero.
-
-“St. Paul, at that time, could hardly have heard any mention of the
-youthful son of Agrippina, but on learning that Nero was destined to
-Imperial power, he would immediately become a Neronian. He became so
-later on. He was still one at the time Nero poisoned Britannicus. Not
-that he was capable of approving of a brother’s murder, but because he
-entertained a profound respect for all government. ‘Let every soul be
-subject unto the higher powers,’ he wrote to his churches. ‘For rulers
-are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not
-be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have
-praise of the same.’ Gallio might perchance have found these maxims
-somewhat simple and commonplace, but he could not have disapproved of
-them as a whole. But if there is a subject which he would not have felt
-tempted to approach while speaking with a Jewish weaver, it is indeed
-the ruling of people and the authority of the Emperor. Once more, what
-could those two men well have said to each other?
-
-“In our own day, when a European official in Africa, let us say the
-Governor-General of the Sudan for his Britannic Majesty, or our
-Governor of Algeria, comes across a fakeer or a marabout, their
-conversation is naturally confined within restricted limits. St. Paul
-was to a proconsul what a marabout is to our civil Governor of Algeria.
-A conversation between Gallio and St. Paul would have resembled only
-too much, I imagine, that held by General Desaix with his famous
-dervish. After the battle of the Pyramids, General Desaix, at the head
-of twelve hundred cavalry, pursued into Upper Egypt the Mamelukes of
-Murad Bey. On arriving at Girgeh, he heard that an old dervish, who had
-acquired among the Arabs a wide reputation for learning and sanctity,
-was living near that city. Desaix was endowed with both philosophy and
-humanity. Desirous of making the acquaintance of a man esteemed of his
-fellows, he caused the dervish to be summoned to headquarters, received
-him with honour, and entered into conversation with him through an
-interpreter.
-
-“‘Venerable old man,’ he said, ‘the French have come to bring Egypt
-justice and liberty.’
-
-“‘I knew they would come,’ replied the dervish.
-
-“‘How did you come to know it?’
-
-“‘Through an eclipse of the sun.’
-
-“‘How can an eclipse of the sun have informed you as to the movement of
-our armies?’
-
-“‘Eclipses are brought about by the angel Gabriel, who places himself
-before the sun in order to announce to the faithful the misfortunes
-which threaten them.’
-
-“‘Venerable old man, you are ignorant of the true cause of eclipses; I
-shall impart the knowledge of it to you.’
-
-“Thereupon, taking a stump of pencil and a scrap of paper, he traced
-some figures:
-
-“‘Let A be the sun, B, the moon, C, the earth,’ and so forth...
-
-“And when he had come to the end of his demonstration,
-
-“‘Such,’ he said, ‘is the theory governing eclipses of the sun.’
-
-“And as the dervish was mumbling a few words,
-
-“‘What does he say?’ asked the General of the interpreter.
-
-“‘General, he says that it is the angel Gabriel who causes eclipses, by
-placing himself in front of the sun.’
-
-“‘The fellow is simply naught but a fanatic!’ exclaimed Desaix.
-
-“Whereupon he drove the dervish out with well-administered kicks.
-
-“I imagine that had a conversation been entered into between St. Paul
-and Gallio, it would have ended somewhat as did the dialogue between
-the dervish and General Desaix.”
-
-“It must, however, be pointed out,” said Joséphin Leclerc, joining
-issue, “that between the Apostle Paul and the dervish of General
-Desaix, there is at the very least this difference: the dervish did
-not impose his faith on Europe. And you will admit that his Britannic
-Majesty’s honourable Governor of the Sudan has doubtless not come
-across the marabout who is to confer his name on the biggest church
-in London; you must likewise admit that our civil Governor of Algeria
-has never come face to face with the founder of a religion which the
-majority of the French nation will some day believe and profess. These
-functionaries have not seen the future arise before them under a human
-form. The proconsul of Achaia did.”
-
-“It was none the less impossible for Gallio,” replied Langelier, “to
-carry on with St. Paul a steady conversation on some important subject
-regarding morals or philosophy. I am well aware, and you yourselves
-are not ignorant of the fact, that towards the fifth century of the
-Christian Era, it was believed that Seneca had known St. Paul in
-Rome, and had expressed admiration of the Apostle’s doctrines. This
-fable owed its spread to the deplorable clouding of the human mind
-following so closely upon the age of Tacitus and of Trajan. In order
-to obtain credence for it, certain forgerers, who at that time swarmed
-in Christian ranks, fabricated a correspondence which is mentioned
-respectfully by St. Jerome and St. Augustine. If these letters are
-those which have come unto us ascribed to Paul and Seneca, it must
-be that those two Fathers did not read them, or that they greatly
-lacked discernment. It is the absurd work of a Christian utterly
-ignorant of everything connected with Nero’s time, and one totally
-incapable of imitating Seneca’s style. Is it necessary to say that the
-great divines of the Middle Ages firmly believed in the truth of the
-intercourse between the two men and in the genuineness of the letters?
-But the classical scholars of the Renaissance had no difficulty in
-demonstrating the unlikelihood and the falsity of these inventions. It
-matters little that Joseph de Maistre should have garnered by the way
-this antiquated rubbish together with much of the same kind. No one any
-longer heeds it, and henceforth it is only in pretty novels written
-for society by skilful and mystical authors that the apostles of the
-primitive Church converse freely with the philosophers and people of
-fashion of Imperial Rome and expound to the delight of Petronius the
-novel beauties of Christianity. The words of Gallio and his friends,
-which you have just heard, are endowed with less charm and more truth.”
-
-“I do not deny it,” replied Joséphin Leclerc, “and I believe that the
-personages of the dialogue are made to think and speak as they must
-actually have thought and spoken, and that the ideas entertained by
-them are those of their day. Therein, it seems to me, lies the merit of
-the work, and therefore do I reason about it just as if I were basing
-my arguments on a historical text.”
-
-“You may safely do so,” said Langelier. “I have not embodied in it
-anything for which I have not the authority of a reference.”
-
-“Very well then,” resumed Joséphin Leclerc, “so we have been
-listening to a Greek philosopher and several Roman literati engaged
-in speculation as to the future destinies of their fatherland, of
-humanity, and of the earth, and seeking to discover the name of Jove’s
-successor. The while they are absorbed in this perplexing quest, the
-apostle of the new god appears before them, and they treat him with
-contempt. I maintain that in so doing they plainly show a lack of
-penetration, and lose through their own fault a unique opportunity of
-becoming instructed concerning that which they felt so great a desire
-to know.”
-
-“It seems self-evident to you, my good friend,” replied Nicole
-Langelier, “that Gallio, had he known how to set about it, would have
-gathered from St. Paul the secret of the future. Such is perhaps the
-first idea that springs to the mind, and it is one that many have
-become imbued with. Renan, after having recorded, according to the
-_Acts_, this singular interview between Gallio and St. Paul, is not
-averse from discovering evidence of a narrow and thoughtless mind in
-the contempt experienced by the proconsul for this Jew of Tarsus who
-appeared before his tribunal. He seizes the opportunity thus offered to
-lament the poor philosophy of the Romans. ‘What a lack of foresight,’
-he exclaims, ‘is sometimes exhibited by intellectual men! In later
-times, it was to be discovered that the squabble between those abject
-sectarians was the great event of the century.’ Renan seems to believe
-that the proconsul of Achaia had merely to listen to that weaver in
-order to be there and then informed of the spiritual revolution in
-course of preparation throughout the universe, and to penetrate the
-secret of future humanity. And this is also no doubt what every one
-thinks at first sight. Nevertheless, ere settling the point, let
-us look more closely into the matter; let us examine what both men
-expected, and let us find out which of the two was, when all is said
-and done, the better prophet.
-
-“In the first place, Gallio believed that the youthful Nero would be
-an emperor of philosophic mind, govern according to the maxims of the
-Portico, and be the delight of the human race. He was mistaken, and
-the reasons for his erroneous assumption are only too patent. His
-brother Seneca was the tutor of the son of Agrippina; his nephew, the
-boy Lucan, lived on terms of intimacy with the young prince. Both
-his family and his personal interests bound up the proconsul with
-the fortunes of Nero. He believed that Nero would make an excellent
-Emperor, for the wish was father to the thought. His mistake arose
-rather from weakness of character than from lack of intellect. Nero,
-moreover, was then a youth full of gentleness, and the early years
-of his principality were not to give the lie to the hopes of the
-philosophers. Secondly, Gallio believed that peace would reign over
-the world after the chastisement of the Parthians. He erred owing to a
-lack of knowledge of the actual dimensions of the earth. He erroneously
-believed that the _orbis Romanus_ covered the whole of the globe; that
-the inhabitable world ended at the burning or frozen strands, rivers,
-mountains, sands, and deserts reached by the Roman eagles, and that the
-Germani and Parthians peopled the confines of the universe. We know
-how much weeping and blood this error, shared in common by all Romans,
-cost the Empire. Thirdly, Gallio, pinning his faith to the oracles,
-believed in the eternity of Rome. He was mistaken, if his prediction
-is to be taken in a narrow and literal sense. But he was not so, if
-one considers that Rome, the Rome of Cæsar and Trajan, has bequeathed
-us its customs and laws, and that modern civilisation proceeds from
-Roman civilisation. It is in the august square where we now stand that
-from the height of the rostral tribune and in the Curia was debated
-the fate of the universe, and the form of constitution which to the
-present day governs the nations. Our science is based on Greek science
-transmitted to us by Rome. The reawakening of ancient thought in the
-fifteenth century in Italy, in the sixteenth century in France and
-Germany, was the cause of Europe being born anew in science and in
-reason. The proconsul of Achaia did not deceive himself: Rome is not
-defunct, since she lives in us. Let us, in the fourth place, examine
-Gallio’s philosophical ideas. No doubt he was not equipped with a very
-sound natural philosophy, and he did not always interpret natural
-phenomena with sufficient precision. He applied himself to metaphysics
-as a Roman, _i.e._, with a lack of acuteness. At heart, he valued
-philosophy merely because of its utility, and devoted himself mainly
-to moral questions. I have neither betrayed nor flattered him when
-placing his speeches on record. I have represented him as serious and
-mediocre, and a fairly good disciple of Cicero. You may have gathered
-that he reconciled, by dint of the poorest of reasoning, the doctrine
-of the Stoics to the national religion. One feels that whenever he
-indulges in speculation as to the nature of the gods, he is anxious to
-remain a good citizen and an honest official. But, after all, he thinks
-matters out, and reasons. The idea he conceives of the forces which
-govern the world is, in its principle, rational and scientific and, in
-this respect, it conforms to that which we have ourselves conceived of
-them. He does not reason as well as his friend the Greek Apollodorus.
-He does not argue any worse than the professors of our University who
-teach an independent philosophy and a Christian antimaterialism. By
-his open-mindedness and his strength of intelligence, he seems our
-contemporary. His thoughts turn naturally in the direction followed by
-the human mind at the present moment. Do not therefore let us say that
-he was unable to recognise the intellectual future of humanity.
-
-“As to St. Paul, he announced the future; none doubt the fact. And yet
-he expected to see with his own eyes the world come to an end, and all
-things existing engulfed in flames. This conflagration of the universe,
-which Gallio and the Stoics foresaw in a future so remote that they
-none the less announced the eternity of the Empire, Paul believed to
-be quite close at hand, and was preparing for that great day. Herein
-he was mistaken, and you will admit that this misconception is in
-itself worse than all the united blunders of Gallio and his friends.
-Still more serious is it that Paul did not base this extraordinary
-belief on any observation or any reasoning whatever. He was ignorant
-of and despised science. He gave himself up to the lowest practices of
-thaumaturgy and glossology, and had no culture whatsoever.
-
-“As a matter of fact, in regard to the future, as well as to the
-present and the past, there was nothing the proconsul could learn
-from the apostle, nothing but a mere name. Had he learnt that Paul was
-of Christ’s religion, he would not have been any the better informed
-as to the future of Christianity, which was within a few years to
-disengage itself almost wholly from the ideas of Paul and of the first
-apostolic men. Thus it will be seen, if one does not pin one’s opinion
-to liturgical texts, and to the strictly verbal interpretations of
-theologians, that St. Paul foresaw the future less accurately than
-Gallio, and one will be inclined to think that were the apostle to
-return to Rome nowadays, he would discover more cause for surprise than
-the proconsul.
-
-“St. Paul, in modern Rome, would no more recognise himself on the
-column of Marcus Aurelius than he would recognise on the column of
-Trajan his old enemy Cephas. The dome of St. Peter’s, the Stanze of
-the Vatican, the splendour of the churches, and the Papal pomp, all
-would offend his blinking eyes. In vain would he look for disciples in
-London, Paris, or Geneva. He would not understand either Catholics or
-Reformers who vie in quoting his real or supposed Epistles. Nor would
-he understand the minds freed from all dogma, who base their opinion
-on the two forces he hated and despised the most: science and reason.
-On discovering that the Son of Man has not come, he would rend his
-garments, and cover himself with ashes.”
-
-Hippolyte Dufresne interrupted, saying:
-
-“Whether in Paris or in Rome, there is no doubt that St. Paul would be
-as an owl blinking in the sun. He would be no more fit than a Bedouin
-of the desert to communicate with cultured Europeans. He would not know
-himself when at a bishop’s, nor would he obtain recognition from him.
-Were he to alight at the house of a Swiss pastor fed upon his writings,
-he would astound him with the primitive crudity of his Christianity.
-All this is true. Bear in mind, however, that he was a Semite, a
-foreigner to Latin thought, to the genius of the Germani and Saxons, to
-the races from which sprung those theologians who, by dint of erroneous
-conceptions, mistranslations, and absurdities, discovered a meaning in
-his counterfeit Epistles. You conceive him in a world which was not his
-own, which can in no wise become his, and this absurd conception at
-once gives birth to an agglomeration of incongruous presentments. We
-picture to ourselves, to illustrate what I say, this vagabond weaver
-sitting in a Cardinal’s coach, and we make merry over the appearance
-presented by two human beings of so opposite a character. If you
-persist in resurrecting St. Paul, pray have the good taste to restore
-him to his race and country, among the Semites of the East, who have
-not greatly changed these twenty centuries, and for whom the Bible and
-the Talmud contain human science in its entirety. Drop him among the
-Jews of Damascus or of Jerusalem. Lead him to the Synagogue. There
-he will listen without astonishment to the teachings of his master,
-Gamaliel. He will enter into disputation with the rabbis, will weave
-goat-hair, live on dates and a little rice, observe the law faithfully,
-and of a sudden undertake to destroy it. He will in turn be persecutor
-and persecuted, executioner and martyr, all with equal keenness. The
-Jews of the Synagogue will proceed with his excommunication, by blowing
-into a ram’s horn, and by spilling drop by drop the wax of black
-candles into a tub containing blood. He will endure without flinching
-this horrible ceremony, and will exercise, in the course of an arduous
-and continually menaced existence, the energy of a headstrong will. In
-such circumstances, he will probably be known to only a few ignorant
-and sordid Jews. But it will be Paul once more, and wholly Paul.”
-
-“That may be possible,” said Joséphin Leclerc. “Yet you will grant me
-that St. Paul was one of the principal founders of Christianity, and
-that he might have imparted to Gallio valuable information concerning
-the great religious movement of which the proconsul was entirely
-ignorant.”
-
-“He who founds a religion,” replied Langelier, “wots not what he
-does. I may say almost the same of those who found great human
-institutions, monastic orders, insurance companies, national guards,
-banks, trusts, trade unions, academies, schools of music and the
-drama, gymnastic societies, soup-kitchens, and lectures. Generally
-speaking, these establishments do not for any length of time carry
-out the intentions of their founders, and it sometimes happens that
-they become diametrically opposed to them. It is as much as one can
-do to trace after many long years a few vestiges of their founders’
-original intention. In the matter of religions, at any rate among
-nations whose existence is troublous and whose mind is fickle, they
-undergo so incessant and so complete a transformation, according to
-the feelings or interests of their faithful and their ministers, that
-in the course of a few years they preserve naught of the spirit which
-created them. Gods undergo more changes than men, for the reason that
-their form is less precise and that they endure longer. Some there are
-who improve as they grow older; others deteriorate with the years. It
-takes less than a century for a god to become unrecognisable. The god
-of the Christians has perhaps undergone a more complete transformation
-than any other. This is doubtless attributable to the fact that he has
-belonged in succession to the most varied civilisations and races, to
-the Latins, to the Greeks, to the Barbarians, and to all the nations
-sprung from the ruins of the Roman Empire. It is assuredly a far cry
-from the wooden Apollo of Dædalus to the classical Apollo Belvedere.
-Still greater a distance separates the youthful Christ of the Catacombs
-from the ascetic Christ of our cathedrals. This personage of the
-Christian mythology perplexes one by the number and variety of his
-metamorphoses. The flamboyant Christ of St. Paul is followed, as early
-as the second century, by the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels, a poor
-Jew, vaguely communistic, who becomes, with the Fourth Gospel, a sort
-of young Alexandrine, a milk-and-water disciple of the Gnostics. At
-a later period, if we only take into account the Roman Christs and
-tarry merely with the most famed of them, we have had the dominating
-Christ of Gregory VII., the bloodthirsty Christ of St. Dominic, the
-mob-leading Christ of Julius II., the atheistic and artistic Christ of
-Leo X., the indeterminate and insipid Christ of the Jesuits, Christ the
-protector of the factory, the defender of capital and the opponent of
-Socialism, who flourished under the pontificate of Leo XIII., and who
-still reigns. All those Christs, who have but the name in common, were
-not foreseen by Paul. In reality, he knew no more than Gallio about the
-future god.”
-
-“You exaggerate,” remarked M. Goubin, who disliked exaggeration in
-whatever form.
-
-Giacomo Boni, who venerates the sacred books of all nations, here
-pointed out that Gallio and the Roman philosophers and historians were
-to be blamed for not having a knowledge of the Jews’ Sacred Scriptures.
-
-“Had they been better informed,” he said, “the Romans would not have
-harboured unjust prejudices against the religion of Israel; and, as
-your own Renan has said, a little goodwill and a better knowledge
-would perhaps have warded off fearful misunderstandings in regard
-to questions of interest to the whole of humanity. There lacked not
-educated Jews like Philo to explain the laws of Moses to the Romans,
-had the latter been more broad-minded and possessed a more correct
-presentiment of the future. The Romans experienced disgust and fear,
-when face to face with Asiatic thought. Even if they were right in
-fearing it, they were wrong in despising it. To despise a danger
-constitutes a great blunder. Gallio displayed want of foresight when
-stigmatising as criminal fancies and profanities of the vulgar the
-Syrian beliefs.”
-
-“How then could the Hellenist Jews have taught the Romans what they
-were themselves ignorant of?” inquired Langelier. “How could that
-honest Philo, so learned yet so shallow, have revealed to them the
-obscure, confused, and fecund thought of Israel, of which he knew
-nothing himself? What could he have imparted to Gallio concerning the
-faith of the Jews except literary absurdities? He would have explained
-to him that the doctrine of Moses harmonises with the philosophy of
-Plato. Then, as always, cultured men had no idea of what was passing
-through the minds of the multitudes. The ignorant mob is for ever
-creating gods unknown to the literati.
-
-“One of the strangest and most notable facts of history is the conquest
-of the world by the god of a Syrian tribe, and the victory of Jehovah
-over all the gods of Rome, Greece, Asia, and Egypt. Upon the whole,
-Jesus was simply a _nĕbi_, and the last of the prophets of Israel.
-Nothing is known about him. We are in the dark as to his life and
-death, for the Evangelists are in nowise biographers. As to the moral
-ideas grouped under his name, they originate in truth with the crowd of
-visionaries who prophesied in the days of the Herods.
-
-“What is called the triumph of Christianity is more accurately the
-triumph of Judaism, and to Israel fell the singular privilege of giving
-a god to the world. It must be admitted that Jehovah deserved his
-sudden elevation in many respects. He was, when he attained to empire,
-the best of the gods. He had made a very bad beginning. Of him it may
-be said what historians say of Augustus, his heart softened with the
-years. At the time when the Israelites settled in the Promised Land,
-Jehovah was stupid, ferocious, ignorant, cruel, coarse, foul-mouthed,
-indeed the most silly and most cruel of gods. But, under the influence
-of the prophets, there came about a complete transformation. He ceased
-being conservative and formal, and became converted to ideas of peace
-and to dreams of justice. His people were wretched. He began to feel a
-profound pity for all poor wretches. And although he remained at heart
-very much a Jew and very patriotic, he naturally became international
-when becoming revolutionary. He constituted himself the defender of
-the humble and oppressed. He conceived one of those simple ideas
-which captivate the world. He announced universal happiness, and the
-coming of a beneficent Messiah whose reign would be peace. His prophet
-Isaiah prompted him as to this admirable theme with words delightfully
-poetical and of unsurpassed softness:
-
-“‘The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of
-the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations
-shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye and let
-us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;
-and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for
-out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from
-Jerusalem. And he shall judge among nations, and shall rebuke many
-people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
-spears into pruning-hooks.
-
-“‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie
-down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling
-together; and a little child shall lead them.’
-
-“In the Roman Empire, the god of the Jews set himself to capture the
-working classes and the social revolution. He addressed himself to the
-unfortunate. Now, in the days of Tiberius and Claudius, there existed
-within the Empire infinitely more unhappy than happy ones. There were
-hordes of slaves. One man alone owned as many as ten thousand. These
-slaves were for the most part sunk in wretchedness. Neither Jupiter,
-nor Juno, nor the Dioscuri troubled themselves about them. The Latin
-gods did not pity their condition. They were the gods of their masters.
-When came from Judæa a god who hearkened to the complaints of the
-humble, they worshipped him. So it is that the religion of Israel
-became the religion of the Roman world. This is what neither St. Paul
-nor Philo could explain to the proconsul of Achaia, for they themselves
-did not see it clearly. And this is what Gallio could not realise.
-He felt, however, that the reign of Jupiter was nearing its end, and
-he predicted the coming of a better god. From love of the national
-antiquities, he went for this god to the Græco-Latin Olympus, and
-selected him of the blood of Jupiter, through aristocratic feeling.
-Thus it is that he chose Hercules instead of Jehovah.”
-
-“For once,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “you will admit that Gallio was
-mistaken.”
-
-“Less so than you think,” replied Langelier with a smile. “Jehovah
-or Hercules, it mattered little. You may be sure of this: the son of
-Alcmene would not have governed the world otherwise than the father of
-Jesus. Olympian as he might be, he would have had to become the god of
-the slaves, and assume the religious spirit of the new times. The gods
-conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have
-reasons for so doing. Pay attention to this. The spirit which favoured
-the accession in Rome of the god of Israel was not merely the spirit of
-the masses, but also that of the philosophers. At that time, they were
-nearly all Stoics, and believed in one god alone, one on whose behalf
-Plato had laboured and one unconnected by tie of family or friendship
-with the gods of human form of Greece and Rome. This god, through his
-infinity, resembled the god of the Jews. Seneca and Epictetus, who
-venerated him, would have been the first to have been surprised at
-the resemblance, had they been called upon to institute a comparison.
-Nevertheless, they had themselves greatly contributed towards rendering
-acceptable the austere monotheism of the Judæo-Christians. Doubtless
-a wide gulf separated Stoic haughtiness from Christian humility, but
-Seneca’s morals, consequent upon his sadness and his contempt of
-nature, were paving the way for the Evangelical morals. The Stoics had
-joined issue with life and the beautiful; this rupture, attributed to
-Christianity, was initiated by the philosophers. A couple of centuries
-later, in the time of Constantine, both pagans and Christians will
-have, so to speak, the same morals and philosophy. The Emperor Julian,
-who restored to the Empire its old religion, which had been abolished
-by Constantine the Apostate, is justly regarded as an opponent of
-the Galilean. And, when perusing the petty treatises of Julian, one
-is struck with the number of ideas this enemy of the Christians held
-in common with them. He, like them, is a monotheist; with them, he
-believes in the merits of abstinence, fasting, and mortification of
-the flesh; with them, he despises carnal pleasures, and considers he
-will rise in favour with the gods by avoiding women; finally, he pushes
-Christian sentiment to the degree of rejoicing over his dirty beard and
-his black finger-nails. The Emperor Julian’s morals were almost those
-of St. Gregory Nazianzen. There is nothing in this but what is natural
-and usual. The transformations undergone by morals and ideas are never
-sudden. The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly,
-and are only seen from afar. Christianity did not secure a foothold
-until such time as the condition of morals accommodated itself to it,
-and as Christianity itself had become adjusted to the condition of
-morals. It was unable to substitute itself for paganism until such time
-as paganism came to resemble it, and itself came to resemble paganism.”
-
-“Granted,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that neither St. Paul nor Gallio saw
-into the future. No one does. Has not one of your friends said: ‘The
-future is concealed even from those who shape it’?”
-
-“Our knowledge of what the future has in store,” resumed Langelier,
-“is in proportion of our acquaintance with the present and the past.
-Science is prophetic. The more a science is accurate, the more can
-accurate prophesies be drawn from it. Mathematics, to which alone
-appertains entire accuracy, communicate a portion of their precision to
-the sciences proceeding from them. Thus it is that accurate predictions
-are made by means of mathematical astronomy and chemistry. One is
-able to calculate eclipses millions of years ahead, without fear of
-one’s calculations being found erroneous, as long as the sun, the
-moon, and the earth shall preserve the same relations as to bulk and
-distance. It is even permitted to us to foresee that these relations
-will be modified in a far distant future. Indeed, it is prophesied,
-on the strength of the celestial mechanism, that the silver hornéd
-moon will not describe eternally the same circle round our globe, and
-that causes now in operation will, by dint of repetition, change its
-course. You may safely predict that the sun will become darkened, and
-will no longer appear except a shrunken globe over our icy seas, unless
-there should come to it in the interval some new alimentation, a thing
-quite within the possibilities, for the sun is capable of catching
-swarms of asteroids, just as a spider does flies. It is, however, safe
-to predict that it will become extinguished, and that the dislocated
-figures of the constellations will vanish star by star in the darkness
-of space. But what does the death of a star amount to? To the fading
-away of a spark. Let all the stars in the heavens die out just as
-the grasses of the field wither, what matters it to universal life,
-so long as the infinitely tiny elements composing them shall have
-retained within themselves the force which makes and unmakes worlds?
-It is safe to predict an even more complete end of the universe, the
-end of the atom, the dissociation of the last elements of matter, the
-times when protyle, when the amorphous fog will have reconquered its
-illimitable empire over the ruins of all things. And this will form but
-a breathing-spell in God’s respiration. All will begin anew.
-
-“The worlds will again be born to life. They will live again to die.
-Life and death will succeed each other for all eternity. All sorts of
-combinations will become facts in the infinity of space and time, and
-we shall find ourselves seated once more on the flank of the Forum in
-ruins. But as we shall not know that we are ourselves, it will not be
-us.”
-
-M. Goubin wiped his eye-glass.
-
-“Such ideas are disheartening,” he remarked.
-
-“What then do you hope for, Monsieur Goubin,” asked Nicole Langelier,
-“to gratify your wishes? Do you aspire to preserve of yourself and of
-the world an eternal consciousness? Why do you wish to remember for all
-time that you are Monsieur Goubin? I will not conceal it from you: the
-present universe, which is far from nearing its end, does not seem to
-possess the property of satisfying you in this respect. Do not place
-any more store in those which are to follow, for they will doubtless
-be of the same kind. Do not, however, abandon all hope. It is possible
-that after an indefinite succession of universes, you shall be born
-anew, Monsieur Goubin, with a recollection of your previous existences.
-Renan has said that it was a risk to be taken, and that at all events
-it would not be long in coming. The successions of universe will take
-place for us within less than a second. Time does not count for the
-dead.”
-
-“Are you cognisant,” asked Hippolyte Dufresne, “of the
-astronomical dreams of Blanqui? The aged Blanqui, a prisoner in the
-Mont-Saint-Michel, could get but a glimpse of the sky through his
-stopped-up window, and had the stars for his only neighbours. This
-made of him an astronomer, and he based on the unity of matter and
-the laws ruling it a strange theory in regard to the identity of the
-worlds. I have read a sixty-page pamphlet of his wherein he sets
-forth that form and life are developed in exactly the same manner in
-a large number of worlds. According to him, a multitude of suns, all
-similar to our own, have, do, or will shed light upon planets in every
-respect similar to the planets of our own system. There is, was, and
-will be, _ad infinitum_, Venuses, Mars, Saturns, and Jupiters, quite
-the counterpart of our Saturn, Mars, and Venus, and worlds similar to
-our own. These worlds produce exactly what our world produces, and
-bear fruits, animals, and men resembling in all respects terrestrial
-plants, animals, and human beings. The evolution of life in them is the
-same as that on our globe. Consequently, thought the aged prisoner,
-there is, was and shall be throughout the infinite space myriads of
-Monts-Saint-Michel, each containing a Blanqui.”
-
-“We know but little of the worlds whose suns shine upon our nights,”
-resumed Langelier. “We perceive, however, that subjected to the same
-mechanical and chemical laws, they differ from our own world and among
-themselves in extent and form, and that the substances burning in them
-are not distributed among all of them in the same proportions. These
-differences must produce an infinity of others which we do not suspect.
-A pebble is sufficient to change the fate of an Empire. Who knows?
-Perchance, Monsieur Goubin, many times multiplied and disseminated
-through myriads of worlds, has wiped, wipes, and shall eternally wipe
-clean his eye-glass.”
-
-Joséphin Leclerc did not suffer his friends to expatiate any further on
-astronomical dreams.
-
-“I am,” he said, “like Monsieur Goubin, of the opinion that all this
-would be heartrending were it not too far from us to affect us. What is
-of paramount interest for us, what we are curious to know is the fate
-of those who will come immediately after us in this world.”
-
-“There is no doubt,” said Langelier, “that the succession of worlds
-only fills us with sad astonishment. We should welcome with a more
-fraternal and friendly eye the future of civilisation, and the
-immediate destiny of our fellow men. The closer at hand the future,
-the more we are concerned about it. Unfortunately, moral and political
-sciences are inaccurate, and full of uncertainty. They have but an
-imperfect knowledge of the so far accomplished developments of
-human evolution, and can therefore not instruct us concerning the
-developments which remain to be completed. Equipped with hardly any
-memory, they have little or no presentiment. This is why scientific
-minds feel an insurmountable repugnance to attempt investigations, the
-uselessness of which they know, and they dare not even confess to a
-curiosity which they entertain no hope of satisfying. Willingly would
-the task be undertaken to discover what would happen, were men to
-become wiser. Plato, Sir Thomas More, Campanella, Fénelon, Cabet, and
-Paul Adam[A] have reconstructed their particular city in Atlantis, in
-the Island of Utopia, in the Sun, at Salentinum, in Icaria, in Malaya,
-and established there an abstract social administration. Others, like
-the philosopher Sébastien Mercier, and the socialist-poet William
-Morris, dived into a far-off future. But they took their system of
-morals with them. They discovered a new Atlantis, and it is a city
-of dreamland which they have harmoniously built there. Shall I also
-quote Maurice Spronck?[B] He shows us the French Republic conquered by
-the Moors, in the 230th year of its foundation. He argues thus, in
-order to induce us to hand over the government to the Conservatives
-whom alone he considers capable of warding off so great a disaster.
-Meanwhile Camille Mauclair,[C] trusting in humanity to come, reads in
-the future the victorious resistance, of Socialistic Europe against
-Mussulman Asia. Daniel Halévy dreads not the Moors, but, with greater
-show of reason, the Russians. He narrates, in his _Histoire de quatre
-ans_, the foundation, in 2001, of the United States of Europe. But
-he seeks to show us more especially that the moral equilibrium of
-nations is unstable, and that a facility suddenly introduced into the
-conditions of life may suffice to let loose on a multitude of men the
-worst scourges and the most cruel sufferings.
-
-  [A] Paul Adam, journalist and playwright; contributor to the _Revue
-      de Paris_ and the _Nouvelle Revue_.
-
-  [B] Maurice Spronck, journalist and barrister; contributor to the
-      _Journal des Débats_, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, the _Revue
-      bleue_, and the _Revue hebdomadaire_.
-
-  [C] Camille Faust, _dit_ Camille Mauclair, art critic and lecturer;
-      author of works on Greuze, Fragonard, Schumann, Rodin, and of
-      _De Watteau à Whistler_.
-
-“Few are those who have sought to know the future, out of pure
-curiosity, and without moral intention or optimistic designs. I
-know no other than H. G. Wells who, journeying through future ages,
-has discovered for humanity a fate he did not, according to every
-indication, expect; for the institution of an anthropophagous
-proletariat and an edible aristocracy is a cruel solution of social
-questions. Yet such is the fate H. G. Wells assigns to posterity. All
-the other prophets of whom I have any knowledge content themselves
-with entrusting to future centuries the realisation of their dreams.
-They do not unveil the future, being satisfied with conjuring it up.
-
-“The truth is that men do not look so far ahead without fright.
-Many consider that such an investigation is not only useless, but
-pernicious; while those most ready to believe that future events are
-discoverable are those who would most dread to discover them. This fear
-is doubtless based on profound reasons. All morals, all religions,
-embody a revelation of humanity’s destiny. The greater part of men,
-whether they admit it to, or conceal it from, themselves, would recoil
-from investigating these august revelations, to discover the emptiness
-of their anticipations. They are accustomed to endure the idea of
-manners totally different from their own, if once those manners are
-buried in the past. Thereupon they congratulate themselves on the
-progress made by morality. But, as their morality is in the main
-governed by their manners, or rather by what they allow one to see of
-them, they dare not confess to themselves that morality, which has
-continually changed with manners, up to their own day, will undergo
-a further change when they have passed out of this life, and that
-future men are liable to conceive an idea entirely at variance with
-their own as to what is permissible or not. It would go against the
-grain with them to admit that their virtues are merely transitory,
-and their gods decrepit. And, although the past is there to point out
-to them ever-changing and shifting rights and duties, they would look
-upon themselves as dupes were they to foresee that future humanity is
-to create for itself new rights, duties and gods. Finally, they fear
-disgracing themselves in the eyes of their contemporaries, in assuming
-the horrible immorality which future morality stands for. Such are the
-obstacles to a quest of the future. Look at Gallio and his friends;
-they would not have dared to foresee the equality of classes in the
-matter of marriage, the abolition of slavery, the rout of the legions,
-the fall of the Empire, the end of Rome, nor even the death of those
-very gods in whom they had all but ceased to believe.”
-
-“’Tis possible,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “but it is time for us to dine.”
-
-And, leaving the Forum bathed in the calm light of the moon, they
-wended their way through the populous streets of the city towards a
-famed but cheap eating-house in the Via Condotti.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-The room was small, and hung with a smoke-stained paper dating from the
-pontificate of Pio Nono. Ancient lithographs were dependent from the
-walls, representing Cavour with his tortoise-shell-framed spectacles
-and collar-like beard, the leonine visage of Garibaldi, the stupendous
-moustaches of Victor Emanuel, a classic placing side by side of the
-combined symbols of the revolution and of the supreme power, a popular
-testimony to the Italian spirit which excels in juxtapositions, and
-in whose midst, in our own day, in Rome, the fulminating Pope and the
-excommunicated King daily exchange assurances of good-neighbourship,
-with an exquisite grasp of politics, and not without a certain flavour
-of delicate comedy. The mahogany sideboard was laden with plated
-chafing-dishes and alabaster goblets. The establishment affected for
-new things a contempt appropriate to long-standing renown.
-
-Seated around a table bedecked with roses, and with flasks of Chianti
-before them, the five continued their philosophic discourse.
-
-“It is quite true,” said Nicole Langelier, “that the heart fails in
-the case of many men, when gazing into the abyss of future events. It
-is moreover certain that our all too imperfect knowledge of facts past
-and gone does not supply us with the elements required to enable us
-to determine accurately what is to succeed them. However, since the
-past of human social organisations is in part known to us, the future
-of those societies, a continuation and consequence of their past, is
-not wholly beyond our ken. It is not impossible to observe certain
-social phenomena, and to define from the conditions under which they
-have already occurred, the conditions under which they will reappear.
-We are not barred, when witnessing the commencement of an order of
-facts, from comparing it with a past order of analogous facts, and
-from deducing from the completion of the second a like completion of
-the first. By way of example: when observing that the forms of labour
-are changeable, that serfdom has succeeded slavery, salaried labour,
-serfdom, new methods of production may be anticipated; when it is shown
-that industrial capital has for barely a century taken the place of
-the small artisans and peasant property, one is led to ponder over the
-form which is to succeed capital; when studying the manner in which
-was carried out the redemption of the feudal burdens and conditions
-of servitude, one is enabled to conceive how the redemption of the
-means of production nowadays constituting private ownership may some
-day be carried out. By studying the great Services of the State now in
-operation, it is possible to form a conception of future socialistic
-methods of production; and, after having thus investigated in several
-respects the present and the past of human industry, we shall, lacking
-certainties, determine by aid of probabilities whether collectivism
-is to be realised some day, not because it is just, for there is no
-reason for believing in the triumph of justice, but because it is
-the necessary sequel to the present state of things, and the fatal
-consequence of capitalistic evolution.
-
-“Let us, if you like, take another example: we possess some experience
-of the life and death of religions. The end of Roman polytheism in
-particular, is familiar to us. Its lamentable end enables us to imagine
-that of Christianity, whose decline we are witnessing.
-
-“We may similarly seek to find out whether future humanity will be
-bellicose or peaceful.”
-
-“I am curious to learn,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “how to set about it.”
-
-M. Goubin shook his head, saying:
-
-“Such a quest is useless. We know its result beforehand. War will last
-as long as the world.”
-
-“There is nothing to prove it,” replied Langelier, “and a consideration
-of the past leads one to believe, on the contrary, that war is not one
-of the essential conditions of social life.”
-
-And Langelier, while waiting for the _minestra_ (soup) which was long
-in making its appearance, developed the foregoing idea, without,
-however, departing from the moderation characterising his mind.
-
-“Although the early periods of the human race,” he said, “are lost to
-us in impenetrable darkness, it is certain that men were not always
-warlike. They were not so during the long ages of the pastoral life;
-the memory of which survives only in a small number of words common
-to all Indo-European languages, and which reveal innocent manners.
-And there are reasons for believing that these peaceful pastoral
-centuries had a far longer duration than the agricultural, industrial,
-and commercial periods which, following them in a necessary progress,
-brought about between tribes and nations a state of all but constant
-war.
-
-“It was by force of arms that it was most frequently sought to acquire
-property, lands, women, slaves, and cattle. At first, wars were waged
-between village and village. Next, the vanquished, joining hands
-with the victors, formed a nation, and wars occurred between nation
-and nation. Each of these peoples, in order to retain possession of
-the acquired riches, or to make further acquisitions, contended with
-neighbouring peoples for the possession of strongholds securing the
-command of roads, mountain passes, river courses, and the seashore. In
-the end, nations formed confederations, and contracted alliances. Thus
-it came about that men banded together; as they increased in strength,
-instead of contending for the goods of the earth, formally bartered
-them. The community of sentiments and interests gradually became
-broadened. A day came when Rome imagined she had established it the
-world over. Augustus thought he had inaugurated the era of universal
-peace.
-
-“We know how this illusion was gradually and savagely dissipated, and
-how the barbarian hordes overwhelmed the Roman peace. These barbarians,
-who had settled within the Empire, cut one another’s throats on its
-ruins, for a space of fourteen centuries, and founded in carnage
-countries baptized in blood. Of such was the life of nations in the
-Middle Ages, and the constitution of the great European monarchies.
-
-“In those days, a state of war was alone possible and conceivable.
-All the forces of the world were organised solely for the purpose of
-maintaining it.
-
-“If the reawakening of thought, at the time of the Renaissance,
-permitted a few sparse minds to conceive better regulated relations
-between nations, at one and the same time, the burning desire to
-invent, and the thirst for knowledge supplied fresh food to the warrior
-instinct. The discovery of the West Indies, the exploration of Africa,
-the navigation of the Pacific Ocean, opened up vast territories
-to European avidity. The white kingdoms joined issue over the
-extermination of the red, yellow, and black races, and for the space of
-four centuries gave themselves up madly to the pillaging of three great
-divisions of the world. This is what is styled modern civilisation.
-
-“During this uninterrupted succession of deeds of rapine and violence,
-Europeans acquired a knowledge of the extent and configuration of
-the earth. As they progressed in this knowledge, so did their work
-of destruction proceed apace. To the present day, the whites come in
-contact with the black or the yellow races but to enslave or massacre
-them. The peoples whom we call barbarians know us so far through our
-crimes only.
-
-“For all that, those navigations, those explorations undertaken in
-a spirit of savage cupidity, these tracks by land and by sea opened
-up to conquerors, adventurers, hunters of and traders in men, these
-life-destroying colonisations, this brutal impulse which has led and
-still leads one-half of humanity to destroy the other, are the fatal
-conditions of a further progress of civilisation, and the terrible
-means which shall have prepared, for a still undetermined future, the
-peace of the world.
-
-“This time, ’tis the whole world assimilated, in spite of enormous
-dissimilarities, to the state of the Roman Empire under Augustus.
-The Roman peace was the fruit of conquest. Universal peace will most
-assuredly not be brought about by the same means. No Empire is there
-to-day which can lay claim to the hegemony of the lands and seas
-covering the globe, known and surveyed at last. But, in spite of their
-being less apparent than those of political and military domination,
-the bonds which are beginning to unite the whole of humanity, and no
-longer merely a part of humanity, are none the less real; they are both
-more supple and more solid, more intimate and infinite in variety,
-since they are connected, athwart the fictions of public life, with the
-realities of social life.
-
-“The increasing multiplicity of communications and exchanges, the
-compulsory solidarity of the financial markets of every capital, of
-commercial markets vainly striving to guarantee their independence by
-recourse to unfortunate expedients, the rapid growth of international
-socialism, seem likely to guarantee, sooner or later, the union of the
-peoples of every continent. If at the present moment the Imperialist
-spirit of the great States and the haughty ambitions of armed
-nations seem to give the lie to these previsions, and to damn these
-aspirations, it will be perceived that in reality modern nationalism
-amounts merely to a confused aspiration towards a more and more vast
-union of intellects and wills, and that the dream of a greater England,
-a greater Germany, a greater America, leads, will or do whatever you
-may, to the dream of a greater humanity, and to a partnership between
-nations for the common exploitation of the riches of the earth....”
-
-The speech was interrupted by the appearance of the tavern-keeper
-bearing a steaming soup-tureen and grated cheese.
-
-And, from amid the hot and aromatic vapour of the soup, Nicole
-Langelier concluded his argument with these words:
-
-“There will doubtless be further wars. The savage instincts coupled
-with the natural desires, pride and hunger, which have embroiled the
-world for so many centuries, will again disturb it. The human masses
-have so far not found their equilibrium. The sagacity of nations is not
-yet sufficiently methodical to secure the common welfare, by means of
-the freedom and the facility of exchanges, man has so far not come to
-be looked up to with respect everywhere by man, the several portions
-of humanity are not yet about to associate harmoniously for the purpose
-of building the cells and organs of one and the same body. It will not
-be vouchsafed even unto the youngest of us to witness the close of the
-era of arms. But, we feel within us a presentiment of these better
-times which we are not to experience. If we extend into the future the
-present trend, we may even now determine the establishment of more
-perfect and frequent communications between all races and all nations,
-a more general and stronger feeling of human solidarity, the rational
-organisation of labour, and the coming of the United States of the
-World.
-
-“Universal peace will become a fact some day, not because men will
-become better (’tis more than we may hope for), but because a new order
-of things, a new science, and new economic necessities will force on
-men the state of peace, just as formerly the very conditions of their
-existence placed and kept them in a state of war.”
-
-“Nicole Langelier, a rose has shed a leaf in your glass,” said Giacomo
-Boni. “This has not taken place without the permission of the gods. Let
-us drink to the future peace of the world.”
-
-Raising his glass, Joséphin Leclerc remarked:
-
-“This wine of Chianti has a tart savour, and a light sparkle. Let us
-drink to peace, the while Russians and Japanese are waging a bitter
-war in Manchuria and in Korea Bay.”
-
-“That war,” resumed Langelier, “marks one of the great periods in the
-history of the world. And, in order to grasp its meaning, we must hark
-back two thousand years.
-
-“The Romans, assuredly, did not suspect the vastness of the barbarian
-world, and had no conception of those immense human reservoirs which
-were to burst on them one fine day, and submerge them. They did not
-suspect that there existed in the world any other than the Roman peace.
-And yet, an older and vaster one there was, the Chinese peace.
-
-“Not but what their merchants had business relations with the
-merchants of Serica. The latter were wont to bring raw silk to a spot
-situated to the north of the Pamir table-land, named the Tower of
-Stone. The merchants of the Empire went thither. Bolder Latin traders
-penetrated as far as the Gulf of Tong-King and the Chinese coasts up
-to Hang-chau-fu, or Hanoi. Nevertheless, the Romans did not conceive
-that Serica constituted an Empire more densely populated than their own
-one, richer, and more advanced in agriculture and political economy.
-The Chinese, on their part, knew the white men. Their annals mention
-the fact that the Emperor An-tung, under which name we recognise
-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, despatched an embassy to them, which
-was perhaps merely an expedition of navigators and merchants. But
-they were ignorant of the fact that a civilisation more seething and
-violent than their own, as well as more prolific and infinitely more
-expansive, was spread over one of the faces of the globe of which they
-covered another face: the Chinese, agriculturists and gardeners full
-of experience, honest and expert merchants, led a happy life, owing to
-their system of exchange and to their immense associations of credit.
-Contented with their subtle science, their exquisite politeness, their
-singularly human piety, and their immutable wisdom, they were doubtless
-not anxious to become acquainted with the ways of life and thought
-of the white men who had come from the land of Cæsar. Perchance the
-ambassadors of An-tung may have seemed somewhat gross and barbarian to
-them.
-
-“The two great civilisations, the yellow and the white, continued
-ignorant of each other until the day when the Portuguese, having
-doubled the Cape of Good Hope, settled down to trade at Macao.
-Merchants and Christian missionaries established themselves in China,
-and indulged in every kind of violence and rapine. The Chinese
-tolerated them, in the manner of men accustomed to works of patience,
-and marvellously capable of endurance; nevertheless, they could on
-occasion take life with all the refinements of cruelty. For nearly
-three whole centuries the Jesuits were, in the Middle Kingdom, a source
-of endless disturbances. In our own times, the Christian acquired the
-habit of sending jointly or separately into that vast Empire, whenever
-order was disturbed, soldiers who restored it by means of theft,
-rape, pillage, murder, and incendiarism, and of proceeding at short
-intervals with the pacific penetration of the country with rifles and
-guns. The poorly armed Chinese either defend themselves badly or not
-at all, and so they are massacred with delightful facility. They are
-polite and ceremonious, but are reproached with cherishing feeble
-sentiments of affection for Europeans. The grievances we have against
-them are greatly of the order of those which Mr. Du Chaillu cherished
-towards his gorilla. Mr. Du Chaillu, while in a forest, brought down
-with his rifle the mother of a gorilla. In its death, the brute was
-still pressing its young to its bosom. He tore it from this embrace,
-and dragged it with him in a cage across Africa, for the purpose of
-selling it in Europe. Now, the young animal gave him just cause for
-complaint. It was unsociable, and actually starved itself to death.
-‘I was powerless,’ says Mr. Du Chaillu, ‘to correct its evil nature.’
-We complain of the Chinese with as great a show of reason as Mr. Du
-Chaillu of his gorilla.
-
-“In 1901, order having been disturbed at Peking, the troops of the
-five Great Powers, under the command of a German Field-Marshal,
-restored it by the customary means. Having in this fashion covered
-themselves with military glory, the five Powers signed one of the
-innumerable treaties by which they guarantee the integrity of the very
-China whose provinces they divide among themselves.
-
-“Russia’s share was Manchuria, and she closed Korea to Japanese trade.
-Japan, which in 1894 had beaten the Chinese on land and on sea, and
-had taken a part, in 1901, in the pacifying action of the Powers, saw
-with concentrated fury the advance of the voracious and slow-footed
-she-bear. And, while the huge brute indolently stretched out its muzzle
-towards the Japanese beehive, the yellow bees, arming their wings and
-stings together, riddled it with burning punctures.
-
-“‘It is a colonial war,’ was the expression used by a high-placed
-Russian official to my friend Georges Bourdon.[D] Now, the fundamental
-principal of every colonial war is that the European should be more
-powerful than the peoples whom he is fighting; this is as clear as
-noonday. It is understood that in these kinds of wars the European is
-to attack with artillery, while the Asiatic or African is of course
-to defend himself with arrows, clubs, assegais and tomahawks. It
-is tolerated that he should procure a few antiquated flint-locks
-and cartridge-pouches; this aids in rendering colonisation more
-glorious. But in no case is it permissible that he should be armed
-and instructed in European fashion. His fleet must consist of junks,
-canoes and ‘dug-outs.’ Should he perchance purchase ships from European
-ship-owners, such ships shall naturally be unfit for use. The Chinese
-who fill their arsenals with porcelain shells conform to the rules of
-colonial warfare.
-
-  [D] M. Georges Bourdon, journalist, on the staff of _Le Figaro_.
-
-“The Japanese have departed from these rules. They wage war in
-accordance with the principles taught in France by General Bonnal. They
-greatly outweighed their adversaries in knowledge and intelligence.
-While fighting better than Europeans, they show no respect for
-consecrated usages, and act to a certain degree in a fashion contrary
-to the law of nations.
-
-“’Tis in vain that serious individuals like Monsieur Edmond Théry[E]
-demonstrated to them that they were bound to be beaten, in the superior
-interest of the European market and in conformity with the most firmly
-established economic laws. Vainly did the proconsul of Indo-China,
-Monsieur Doumer himself, call upon them to suffer, and at short notice,
-decisive defeats on sea and on land. ‘What a financial sadness would
-bow down our hearts,’ exclaimed this great man, ‘were Bezobrazoff and
-Alexeieff not to extract another million out of the Korean forests.
-They are kings. Like them, I was a king: our cause is a common one. Oh
-ye Japanese! Imitate in their gentleness the copper-coloured folk over
-whom I reigned so gloriously under Méline.’ In vain did Dr. Charles
-Richet,[F] skeleton in hand, represent to them that being prognathous,
-and not having the muscles of their calves sufficiently developed, they
-were under the obligation of seeking flight in the trees when face to
-face with the Russians, who are brachycephalous and as such eminently
-civilising, as was demonstrated when they drowned five thousand Chinese
-in the Amur. ‘Bear in mind that you are links between monkey and man,’
-obligingly said to them my Lord Professor Richet, ‘as a consequence of
-which, if you should defeat the Russians or Finno-Letto-Ugro-Slavs, it
-would be exactly as if monkeys were to beat you. Is it not plain to
-you?’ They heeded him not.
-
-  [E] M. Edmond Théry, journalist, on the staff of _Le Figaro_.
-      Has been entrusted by the French Government with several
-      politico-economic missions; author of several works in this
-      connection.
-
-  [F] Dr. Charles Richet, a noted physician, who has written plays,
-      and is the author of several works on physiology and sociology.
-
-“At the present moment, the Russians are paying the penalty, in the
-waters of Japan and in the gorges of Manchuria, not only of their
-grasping and brutal policy in the East, but of the colonial policy of
-all Europe. They are now expiating, not merely their own crimes, but
-those of the whole of military and commercial Christianity. When saying
-this, I do not mean to say that there is a justice in the world. But
-we witness a strange whirligig of things, and brute force, up to now
-the sole judge of human actions, indulges occasionally in unexpected
-pranks. Its sudden starts aside destroy an equilibrium thought to be
-stable. And its pranks, which are ever the work of some hidden rule,
-bring about interesting results. The Japanese cross the Yalu and defeat
-the Russians in good form. Their sailors annihilate artistically a
-European fleet. Immediately do we discern that a danger threatens
-us. If it indeed exists, who created it? It was not the Japanese who
-sought out the Russians. It was not the yellow men who hunted up the
-whites. We there and then make the discovery of a Yellow Peril. For
-many long years have Asiatics been familiar with the White Peril. The
-looting of the Summer Palace, the massacres of Pekin, the drownings of
-Blagovestchenk, the dismemberment of China, were these not enough to
-alarm the Chinese? As to the Japanese, could they feel secure under
-the guns of Port Arthur? We created the White Peril. The White Peril
-has engendered the Yellow Peril. We have here concatenations giving to
-the ancient Necessity which rules the world an appearance of divine
-Justice, and must perforce admire the astonishing behaviour of that
-blind queen of men and gods, when seeing Japan, formerly so cruel to
-the Chinese and Koreans, and the unpaid accessory to the crimes of
-Europeans in China, become the avenger of China, and the hope of the
-yellow race.
-
-“It does not, however, appear at first sight that the Yellow Peril at
-which European economists are terrified is to be compared to the White
-Peril suspended over Asia. The Chinese do not send to Paris, Berlin,
-and St. Petersburg missionaries to teach Christians the Fung-chui, and
-sow disorder in European affairs. A Chinese expeditionary force did
-not land in Quiberon Bay to demand of the Government of the Republic
-_extra-territoriality_, _i.e._, the right of trying by a tribunal of
-mandarins cases pending between Chinese and Europeans. Admiral Togo
-did not come and bombard Brest roads with a dozen battleships, for the
-purpose of improving Japanese trade in France. The flower of French
-nationalism, the _élite_ of our Trublions, did not besiege in their
-mansions in the Avenues Hoche and Marceau the Legations of China and
-of Japan, and Marshal Oyama did not, for the same reason, lead the
-combined armies of the Far East to the Boulevard de la Madeleine to
-demand the punishment of the foreigner-hating Trublions. He did not
-burn Versailles in the name of a higher civilisation. The armies of
-the Great Asiatic Powers did not carry away to Tokio and Peking the
-Louvre paintings and the silver service of the Elysée.
-
-“No indeed! Monsieur Edmond Théry himself admits that the yellow men
-are not sufficiently civilised to imitate the whites so faithfully. Nor
-does he foresee that they will ever rise to so high a moral culture.
-How could it be possible for them to possess our virtues? They are not
-Christians. But men entitled to speak consider that the Yellow Peril
-is none the less to be dreaded for all that it is economic. Japan, and
-China organised by Japan, threaten us, in all the markets of Europe,
-with a competition frightful, monstrous, enormous, and deformed, the
-mere idea of which causes the hair of the economists to stand on end.
-That is why Japanese and Chinese must be exterminated. There can be
-no doubt about the matter. But war must also be declared against the
-United States to prevent it from selling iron and steel at a lower
-price than our manufacturers less well equipped in machinery.
-
-“Let us for once admit the truth, and for a moment cease flattering
-ourselves. Old Europe and new Europe--for that is America’s true
-name--have inaugurated economic war. Each and every nation is waging
-an industrial struggle against the others. Everywhere does production
-arm itself furiously against production. We are displaying bad grace
-when we complain that we are witnessing fresh competing and disturbing
-products invade the market of the world thus thrown into confusion. Of
-what use are our lamentations? That might is right is our god. If Tokio
-is the weaker, it shall be in the wrong and it shall be made to feel
-it; if it is the stronger, right will be on its side, and we shall have
-no reproach to cast at it. Where is the nation in the world entitled to
-speak in the name of justice?
-
-“We have taught the Japanese both the capitalistic _régime_ and war.
-They are a cause of alarm because they are becoming like ourselves.
-In truth, it is awful. They dare to defend themselves with European
-weapons against Europeans. Their generals, their naval officers, who
-have studied in England, in Germany, and in France, reflect honour on
-their instructors. Several of them have followed the classes of our
-special military schools. The Russian Grand Dukes, who feared that no
-good could come out of military institutions too democratic to their
-taste, must feel reassured.
-
-“I am unable to foretell the issue of the war. The Russian Empire
-opposes to the methodical energy of the Japanese its irresolute forces
-which the savage imbecility of its government restrains, the dishonesty
-of a voracious administration robs, and military incapacity leads to
-disaster. The stupendousness of its impotence and the depths of its
-disorganisation stand revealed. Withal, its golden reservoirs, kept
-filled by its rich creditors, are all but inexhaustible. On the other
-hand, its enemy has no other resources than onerous loans obtained with
-difficulty, of which victory itself may perchance deprive them. For
-while English and Americans are one in assisting it to weaken Russia,
-they do not intend that it shall become powerful and to be feared. It
-is hard to predict the final victory of one combatant over the other.
-But if Japan makes the yellow men respected by the white men, it will
-have greatly served the cause of humanity, and paved the way unawares
-and doubtless against its own wish for the pacific organisation of the
-world.”
-
-“What do you mean,” said M. Goubin, raising his eyes from his plate
-filled with a savoury _fritto_.
-
-“It is feared,” continued Nicole Langelier, “that Japan grown to
-manhood will educate China, teach it to defend itself and to exploit
-its wealth itself, and that Japan will create a strong China. No need
-to look upon such a contingency with alarm; it should, on the contrary,
-be hoped for in the universal interest. Strong nations co-operate to
-the harmony and wealth of the world. Weak nations, like China and
-Turkey, are a perpetual cause of disturbances and perils. But we are
-ever in too great a haste in our fears and hopes. Should victorious
-Japan undertake to organise the old yellow Empire, it will not succeed
-in its task that quickly. It will require time to teach China that a
-China exists. For she knows it not, and as long as she is unaware of
-it, there will not be any China. A people exists only in the knowledge
-possessed by it of its existence. There are 350,000,000 Chinese, but
-they are not aware of the fact. As long as they have not counted
-themselves, they will not count for anything. They will not even exist
-by dint of numbers. ‘Number off!’ is the first word of command spoken
-by the drill-sergeant to his men. He is there and then teaching them
-the principle of societies. But it takes a long time for 350,000,000
-men to number themselves. Nevertheless, Ular, who is a European out
-of the common, since he believes that one should be humane and just
-towards the Chinese, informs us that a great national movement is
-simmering in all the provinces of the huge empire.”
-
-“And even should it happen,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that victorious
-Japan came to infuse into Mongols, Chinese, and Tibetans a
-consciousness of themselves, and caused them to be respected by the
-white races, in what way would the peace of the world be better
-assured, and the conquering mania of nations be kept within stricter
-bounds? Would not negro humanity still remain to be exterminated?
-Where is the black nation which will insure the respecting of negroes
-by the white and yellow races?”
-
-“But,” interposed Nicole Langelier, “who can define how far one of the
-great human races may go? The blacks are not, like the red man, dying
-out through contact with the Europeans. Where is the prophet who will
-venture to tell the 200,000,000 African blacks that their posterity
-will never enjoy wealth and peace on the lakes and great rivers? The
-white men passed through the ages of caves and lacustrine villages.
-They were at that time wild and naked. They dried rude potteries in the
-sun. Their chiefs led barbarian dances at which they shouted. They knew
-no other sciences than those of their sorcerers. Since those days they
-have built the Parthenon, conceived geometry, subjected the expression
-of their thought and the motions of their body to the laws of harmony.
-
-“Are you then going to say to the African negroes: ‘You shall for ever
-carry on an internecine war between tribe and tribe, and you shall
-inflict upon one another atrocities and absurd tortures; King Gléglé,
-permeated with a religious idea, shall for all time have prisoners tied
-up in a basket and thrown from the roof of his royal hut; you shall for
-ever devour with enjoyment the strips of flesh torn from the decomposed
-cadavers of your aged relations; for ever shall explorers unload
-their rifles on you, and smoke you out in your kraals; the wonderful
-Christian soldier will enjoy in his bravery the amusement of hacking
-your women to pieces; the gay and festive sailor from the befogged seas
-shall for all time kick in the bellies of your little children, just to
-take the stiffness out of his knee-joints? Can you safely prophesy to
-one-third of humanity a state of perpetual ignominy?
-
-“I am unable to say whether one day, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe predicted in
-1840, a life will awaken in Africa full of a splendour and magnificence
-unknown to the cold-blooded races of the West, and whether art will
-blossom forth in new and dazzling forms. The blacks possess a keen
-appreciation of music. It may happen that a delightful negro art of
-dance and song shall see the light of day. In the meanwhile, the
-coloured folk of the Southern States are making rapid strides in
-capitalistic civilisation. Monsieur Jean Finot[G] has recently supplied
-us with information on the subject.
-
-  [G] M. Jean Finot, editor of _La Revue_, and contributor to several
-      French and European publications.
-
-“Fifty years ago they did not, as a whole, own two hundred and
-fifty acres of land. Nowadays their property is valued at over
-£160,000,000. They were illiterate. To-day fifty per cent. of them
-can read and write. There are black novelists, poets, economists, and
-philanthropists.
-
-“The half-breeds, the issue of master and slave, are singularly
-intelligent and vigorous. The coloured men, both cunning and ferocious,
-instinctive and calculating, will gradually (so one of them has
-confided to me) reap the advantage of number, and one day lord it over
-the effeminate creole race which exercises so lightly over the blacks
-its fitful cruelty. It may be that the mulatto of genius, who will make
-the children of the whites pay dearly the blood of the negroes lynched
-by their fathers, is already born.”
-
-M. Goubin primed himself with his powerful eye-glass, and remarked:
-
-“Were the Japanese to be victorious, they would take Indo-China from
-us.”
-
-“Thereby rendering us a great service,” answered Langelier. “Colonies
-are the curse of nations.”
-
-M. Goubin’s indignant silence was his sole reply.
-
-“I cannot listen to such statements,” exclaimed Joséphin Leclerc. “We
-require outlets for our products, and territories for our industrial
-and commercial expansion. What are you thinking of, Langelier? One
-policy alone governs Europe, America, and the world to-day--colonial
-policy.”
-
-Nicole Langelier, unruffled, replied:
-
-“Colonial policy is the most recent form of barbarism, or, if you
-prefer, the term of civilisation. I make no distinction between these
-two expressions; they are identical. What men call civilisation is
-the present condition of manners, while what they style barbarism are
-anterior conditions. The manners of to-day will be styled barbarian
-when they shall be of the past. It is patent to me that our manners and
-morals embody the idea that strong nations shall destroy the weaker
-ones. Of such is the principle of the law of nations.
-
-“It remains to be seen, however, whether conquests abroad always
-constitute a good stroke of business for nations. It would not seem so.
-What have Mexico and Peru done for Spain? Brazil for Portugal? Batavia
-for Holland? There are various kinds of colonies. There are colonies
-which afford to unfortunate Europeans desert and uncultivated lands.
-These, loyal as long as they remain poor, separate from the mother
-country as soon as they become prosperous. Some there are which are
-inhabitable; these supply raw material, and import manufactured goods.
-Now it is plain that these colonies enrich, not those who govern them,
-but whoever trades with them. The greater part of the time they are
-not worth what they cost. Moreover, they may at any moment expose the
-mother country to military disasters.”
-
-“How about England?” interrupted M. Goubin.
-
-“England is less a nation than a race. The Anglo-Saxons know no
-fatherland but the sea. England, looked upon as wealthy in her vast
-domains, owes her fortune and her power to her commerce. It is not her
-colonies which should be envied her, but her merchants, the authors of
-her wealth. Do you imagine, by way of illustration, that the Transvaal
-represents so very good a stroke of business for her? For all that, it
-is conceivable that in the present state of the world nations who bring
-forth many children and manufacture products in large quantities should
-seek territories and markets in far-off lands, and secure possession
-of them by stratagem and violence. How different it is in our own
-case! Our thrifty nation, careful not to have more children than the
-natal soil can feed without difficulty, and producing in a moderate
-degree, does not willingly embark on distant adventures; our France,
-who hardly goes beyond her garden wall, great heavens, what need has
-she of colonies? Of what use are they to her? What do they bring her?
-She has spent men and money in profusion, in order that the Congo,
-Cochin-China, Annam, Tonking, Guiana, and Madagascar shall purchase
-calicoes from Manchester, guns from Birmingham and Liége, brandies from
-Dantzig, and cases of wine all the way from Bordeaux to Hamburg. She
-has, for seventy years, despoiled, hunted, and shot down Arabs, and in
-the end she has peopled Algeria with Italians and Spaniards!
-
-“The irony of these results is cruel enough, and it is hard to realise
-that this empire, ten or eleven times as big as France herself, has
-been formed to our detriment. But, it must be taken into consideration
-that whereas the French nation derives no advantage whatsoever from
-the possession of territories in Africa and Asia, the heads of its
-Government, on the other hand, find it to their great advantage to
-acquire them. They thereby secure the affection of the navy and army,
-which on the occasion of colonial expeditions reap a harvest of
-promotions, pensions, and crosses, to say nothing of the glory won in
-defeating the enemy. They conciliate the clergy by opening new paths
-to the Propaganda, and by allocating territories to Catholic missions.
-They make joyous the ship-owners, builders, and army contractors,
-whom they load with orders. They secure for themselves in the country
-itself a numerous following by the granting of concessions of immense
-forests and plantations without end. And, what is still more precious
-to them, they attach to their majority every parliamentary jobber
-and kerbstone-broker. Lastly, they cajole the multitude, proud in
-its possession of a yellow and black empire, which makes Germany and
-England turn green with envy. They are looked upon as good citizens,
-patriots, and great statesmen. And if, like Ferry, they incur the
-risk of going under, as the result of some military disaster, they
-willingly run the risk fully convinced that the most harmful of distant
-expeditions will cost them fewer difficulties, and will inveigle them
-into fewer perils than the most useful of social reforms.
-
-“You can now realise why we have occasionally had imperialist
-ministers, jealous of aggrandising our colonial domain. We must
-congratulate ourselves, however, and praise the moderation of our
-rulers, who might have burdened us with still more colonies.
-
-“But all danger has not been averted, and we are threatened with an
-eighty years’ warfare in Morocco. Is there never to be an end to the
-colonial mania?
-
-“I am fully aware that nations are not sensible. How can it be
-expected of them, if one considers what they are made of? Still, a
-certain instinct oftentimes warns them of what is harmful. They are
-occasionally endowed with the power of observing. In the long run they
-undergo the painful experience of their errors and blunders. The day
-will come when it will dawn upon them that colonies are a source of
-perils and ruinous results. Commercial barbarism will be followed by
-commercial civilisation, and forcible, by pacific penetration. These
-ideas have to-day found an echo even in the bosom of parliaments. They
-will prevail, not because men will be more disinterested, but because
-they will know their own interests better.
-
-“The great human asset is man himself. In order to rate the terrestrial
-globe, it is necessary to begin by rating men. To exploit the soil, the
-mines, the waters, all the substances and all the forces of our planet,
-it needs man, the whole of man; humanity, the whole of humanity. The
-complete exploitation of the terrestrial globe demands the united
-labour of white, yellow, and black men. By reducing, diminishing, and
-weakening, or, to sum it up in one word, by colonising a portion of
-humanity, we are working against ourselves. It is to our advantage
-that yellow and black men should be powerful, free, and wealthy. Our
-prosperity and our wealth depend on theirs. The more is produced, the
-more will there be consumed. The greater the profit they derive from
-us, the greater the profit we shall derive from them. If they reap the
-benefit of our labours, so shall we fully reap theirs.
-
-“If we study the movements which govern the destinies of societies, we
-may perhaps discover signs that the era of violent deeds is coming to
-an end. War, which was formerly a standing institution among nations,
-is now intermittent, and the periods of peace have become of longer
-duration than those of war. Our country affords the observations of
-a fact full of interest, for the French nation presents an original
-characteristic in the military history of nations. Whereas other
-nations never waged war except from interest or necessity, alone the
-French have fought for the pleasure of fighting. Now it is remarkable
-that the taste of our compatriots has undergone a change. Thirty years
-ago Renan wrote: ‘Whoever knows France as a whole and in her provincial
-varieties will not hesitate to recognise the fact that the movement
-swaying this country for the past fifty years is essentially pacific.’
-It is a fact attested by a large number of observers that in 1870
-France had no desire to have recourse to the arbitrament of war, and
-that the declaration of war was greeted with consternation. It is an
-assured fact that few Frenchmen dream of taking the field, and that
-everybody readily accepts the idea that the army exists in order to
-avoid a war. Let me quote one example out of a thousand in confirmation
-of this state of mind. Monsieur Ribot, a representative of the people
-and a former Cabinet Minister, having been invited to some patriotic
-celebration, replied with an eloquent letter, begging to be excused.
-The same Monsieur Ribot knits his brows superciliously at the mere
-mention of the word disarmament. He has towards standards and cannon
-the leaning proper to a former Minister of Foreign Affairs. In his
-letter he denounces as a national peril the pacific ideas disseminated
-by the Socialist. He sees in them a spirit of renunciation he cannot
-endure. Not that he is of a bellicose turn of mind. He, too, sighs
-for peace, but a peace full of pomp, magnificent, and flashing with
-the same pride as war. Between Monsieur Ribot and Jaurès, the matter
-is merely one of form. Both of them are for peace. Jaurès, simply;
-Monsieur Ribot, superbly. That is all. Better still and more surely
-than the Socialist democracy which contents itself with a bloused or
-coated peace does the sentiment of the bourgeois, who demand a peace
-gleaming with military insignia and bedecked with emblems of glory,
-testify to the inevitable decline of all idea of revenge and conquests,
-since one discerns in it the military instinct, at the very time when
-it is losing its nature and is becoming pacific.
-
-“France is acquiring by degrees the sentiment of her true strength,
-consisting in intellectual strength; she is becoming conscious of her
-mission, which is the sowing of ideas and the exercise of a sway over
-thought. She will within measurable time perceive that her only stable
-power has lain in her speakers, her writers, and her men of science.
-Hence she will some day fain have to recognise that the force of
-numbers, after having so often betrayed her, is finally escaping from
-her, and that the time has come for her to resign herself to the glory
-which the exercise of the mind and the use of reason assure her of.”
-
-Jean Boilly, shaking his head, said:
-
-“You ask that France should teach other nations concord and peace. Are
-you so sure that she will be listened to and her example followed?
-Is her own tranquillity so assured? Has she not to fear threats from
-outside, to foresee dangers, to watch over her safety, and to provide
-for her defence? One swallow does not make a summer; one nation does
-not make the peace of the world. Is it so sure that Germany keeps up
-an army with the sole object of not waging war? Her Social-Democrats
-desire peace. But they are not the masters, and their deputies do
-not enjoy in the Parliament the authority which the number of their
-electors should give them. And Russia, who has hardly entered upon the
-industrial period, do you believe that she will soon be entering upon
-the pacific period? Is it not to be feared that after having disturbed
-Asia she will disturb Europe?
-
-“Supposing even that Europe should become pacific, can you not see
-that America would become warlike? Following upon Cuba, reduced to the
-state of a vassal republic, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the annexation of
-the Philippines, it is impossible to say that the American Union is
-not a conquering nation. A publicist of Yankee proclivities, Stead,
-has said amid the plaudits of the whole of the United States: ‘The
-Americanisation of the world is on the march.’ And then there is Mr.
-Roosevelt, whose dream is to plant the Stars and Stripes in South
-Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. Mr. Roosevelt is Imperialist
-and he sighs for an America mistress of the world. Between ourselves,
-he is planning the Empire of Augustus. He has unfortunately perused
-Livy. The conquests of the Romans banish sleep from him. Have you read
-his speeches? They breathe a bellicose spirit. ‘Fight, my friends,’
-says Mr. Roosevelt, ‘and fight hard. There is nothing like blows. We
-are upon earth only to exterminate one another. Those who tell you the
-contrary are men without morality. Mistrust men who think. Thought
-enervates. ’Tis a French failing. The Romans conquered the world. They
-lost it. We are the modern Romans.’ Words full of eloquence, backed
-up with a navy which will soon be the second in the world, and with a
-military Budget of 40,500,000 francs!
-
-“The Yankees declare that in four years’ time they will fight Germany.
-If we are to believe this, they should first tell us where they
-expect to come into contact with the enemy. That a Russia, the serf
-of her Czar, that a still feudal Germany, should entertain armies
-for fighting purposes, this one is tempted to lay to the door of
-ancient habits and the survival of a strenuous past. But that a young
-democracy, the United States of America, an aggregation of business
-men, a mass of emigrants from all countries, lacking community,
-traditions, and memories, madly cast into the scramble for the
-mighty dollar, should of a sudden be swept with the desire of firing
-torpedoes at the flanks of battleships, and of exploding mines under
-the enemy’s columns, affords a proof that the inordinate struggle for
-the production and exploitation of riches keeps alive the employment
-of and taste for brutal force, that industrial violence engenders
-military violence, and that mercantile rivalries kindle between nations
-hatreds that bloodshed can alone extinguish. The colonial mania of
-which you were speaking a while ago is but one of the thousand forms
-of the much-vaunted competition of our economists. The capitalistic
-state is just as much a warlike one as the feudal. The era has dawned
-of great wars for the industrial sovereignty. Under the present
-_régime_ of national production it is the cannon which fixes tariffs,
-establishes customs, opens and closes markets. There exists no other
-regulator of commerce and industry. Extermination is the fatal result
-of the economic conditions in which the civilised world finds itself
-to-day....”
-
-The perfume of Gorgonzola and Stracchino was pervading the table. The
-waiter was bringing in wax-candles to each of which was attached the
-_abbrustolatoio_[H] wherewith to light the long cigars with straws, so
-dear to Italians.
-
-  [H] _Abbrustolatoio_--apparatus attached to the candle; it has
-      two rings through which the cigar is placed, and left to
-      burn awhile.
-
-Hippolyte Dufresne, who for some time past seemed to have remained
-indifferent to the conversation, here remarked in a low tone tinged
-with an ostentatious modesty:
-
-“Gentlemen, our friend Langelier was asserting just now that many men
-are afraid of disgracing themselves in the eyes of their contemporaries
-by assuming the horrible immorality which is to be the morality of the
-future. I do not entertain a like fear, and I have written a little
-tale, which has perhaps no other merit than the one of revealing my
-calmness of mind when considering the future. I shall one day crave
-permission to read it to you.”
-
-“Read it right away,” said Boni, lighting his cigar.
-
-“You will be giving us pleasure,” added Joséphin Leclerc, Nicole
-Langelier, and M. Goubin.
-
-“I am not sure whether I have the manuscript with me,” replied
-Hippolyte Dufresne.
-
-With these words, he drew out of his pocket a roll of paper, and began
-to read what follows.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-THROUGH THE HORN OR THE IVORY GATE
-
-
-“It was about one o’clock in the morning. Before retiring for the
-night, I opened the window and lit a cigarette. The hum of a motor-car
-scudding along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne broke the reigning
-silence. The trees were freshening the atmosphere by the swaying of
-their darkened tops. No buzzing insect, no living sound arose from
-the sterile soil of the city. The night was resplendent with stars.
-Their fires seemed, in the clearness of the air, more so than on other
-nights, of varied lines. The greater number blazed at white heat. Some
-there were, however, yellow and orange-tinted, similar to the flames
-of dying lamps. Several were blue, and I saw one of so pale a blue, so
-limpid, and so soft, that I could not avert my gaze from it. I regret
-being ignorant of its name, but I console myself with the thought that
-men do not give the stars their true names.
-
-“When I reflect that each one of these drops of light enlightens
-worlds, I ask myself whether, like our own sun, they do not shed their
-rays on sufferings without end, and whether pain does not penetrate the
-utmost recesses of heaven. We can only judge the other worlds by our
-own. We know of life only the forms which it assumes upon the earth,
-and if we suppose that our planet is one of the least good, we have
-no reason for believing that all goes rightly in the others, nor that
-fortunate is he who is born under the rays of Altair, Betelgeux, or
-the fiery Sirius, when we know what a grievous affair it is to open
-our eyes on earth to the light of our old Sun. It is not that I find
-mine an unhappy fate, when compared with that of other men. I am not
-troubled with either wife or child. Love and sickness have left me
-unscathed. I am not very rich, and I do not go into society. I am thus
-to be numbered with the happy ones. Little joy, however, falls to their
-lot. What, then, can be the fate of the others? Men are really to be
-pitied. I impute no blame to nature for this; to hold a conversation
-with her is an impossibility; she is not intelligent. Nor will I lay
-the blame on society. There is no sense in opposing society to nature.
-It is as absurd to oppose the nature of men to the society of men, as
-to oppose the nature of ants to the society of ants, or the nature
-of herrings to the society of herrings. Animal societies are the
-necessary outcome of animal nature. The earth is the planet where one
-eats; ’tis the planet of hunger. The animals peopling it are naturally
-gluttonous and ferocious. Man, the most intelligent of them all, is
-alone avaricious. Avarice has so far been the fundamental virtue of
-human societies, and the moral masterpiece of nature. Were I a writer,
-I should indite the praise of avarice. It is true that my book would
-not reveal anything strikingly new. The subject has been dealt with a
-hundred times over by moralists and economists. Human societies have
-avarice and cruelty as their august basis.
-
-“It is thus in the other universes, in the numberless ethereal worlds?
-Do all the stars I see shed their light on men? Do people eat and
-inter-devour one another beyond the infinite. This doubt troubles me,
-and I am unable to contemplate without fright the fiery dew suspended
-in the heavens.
-
-“My thoughts imperceptibly become more lucid and gentle, and the idea
-of life, in its sensuality, violent and suave in turn, once more
-assumes a pleasurable aspect to my mind. I sometimes say to myself that
-life is beautiful. For, without such beauty, how could we discern its
-ugly features, and how believe that nature is bad, if at the same time
-we do not believe that it is good?
-
-“For a few minutes past, the phrases of a sonata of Mozart have hovered
-in the air, with their white columns and their garlands of roses. My
-neighbour is a pianist, who at nights plays Mozart and Gluck. I close
-the window, and while undressing, I am pondering over the doubtful
-pleasures which I may give myself the next day, when of a sudden I
-remember that for a week past I have been invited to lunch in the Bois
-de Boulogne; I have a vague idea that the invitation is for the coming
-day. To make sure of it, I look up the letter of invitation, which lies
-open on my table. Its contents are:
-
-                                      “‘16th September 1903.
-    “‘My dear old Dufresne,--
-        “‘Do me the pleasure of coming to luncheon with ... etc.
-    etc., next Saturday, the 23rd of September, 1903, etc. etc.’
-
-“It is for to-morrow.
-
-“I ring for my valet.
-
-“‘Jean, wake me to-morrow at nine o’clock.’
-
-“It happens precisely that to-morrow, the 23rd of September 1903,
-I shall enter upon my fortieth year. From what I have already seen
-in this world I can almost conceive what still remains for me to be
-seen. I can safely foretell the topics of to-morrow’s conversation
-at the restaurant in the Bois: ‘My automobile goes sixty kilomètres
-an hour.’--‘Blanche has a nasty disposition; but she is true to me;
-of that I feel sure.’--‘The Cabinet takes its pass-word from the
-Socialists.’--‘In the long run, the _petits-chevaux_ are a bore.
-However, there remains _baccara_.’--‘The workmen would be fools not to
-do as they please: the government always gives in to them.’--‘I will
-bet you that Epingle-d’Or will beat Ranavalo.’--‘What I personally
-cannot make out is why there is not some General to sweep away all
-those blackguards.’--‘What can you expect? France has been sold to
-England and Germany by the Jews.’ This is what I shall hear to-morrow.
-Here you have the social and political ideas of my friends, the
-great-grandsons of the bourgeois of July, princes of the factory and
-foundry, kings of the mine, who knew the way of mastering and enslaving
-the forces of the Revolution. My friends do not seem to me capable
-of preserving for any lengthy period the industrial empire and the
-political power bequeathed to them by their ancestors. My friends do
-not shine by their intelligence. They have not indulged in too much
-brainwork. No more have I. So far, I have not done much in this life.
-Like them, I am both idle and ignorant. I do not feel myself capable of
-achieving anything, and if I do not possess their vanity, if my brain
-is not stored with all the foolish ideas encumbering theirs; if, like
-them, I do not feel a hatred for and a fear of ideas, it is due to a
-peculiar circumstance of my life. My father, a big manufacturer and
-Conservative deputy, gave me, when I was seventeen, a young and timid
-“coach,” who spoke little, and who looked like a girl. While preparing
-me for my bachelorship, he was organising the social revolution in
-Europe. His gentleness was something refreshing. He has often been
-put in prison, and is now a deputy. I used to copy his addresses to
-the international proletariat. He made me read the whole Socialistic
-library. He taught me things all of which were not to be credited, but
-he opened my eyes to what was going on about me; he demonstrated to me
-that everything our society honours is contemptible, and that all that
-it despises is worthy of esteem. He led me into the paths of rebellion.
-In spite of his demonstrations, I came to the conclusion that falsehood
-should be respected and hypocrisy venerated as the two surest supports
-of the public order. I remained a Conservative, but my soul became
-saturated with disgust.
-
-“As I am falling asleep, a few almost imperceptible phrases of Mozart
-still reach my ears now and then, and make me dream of temples of
-marble standing amid a blue foliage.
-
-“It was broad daylight when I awoke. I dressed myself much more quickly
-than it is my wont. Unconscious of the cause for this haste, I found
-myself in the street without knowing how I had got there. What I now
-saw about me was to me the cause of a surprise which suspended all
-my faculties of reflection; and it is owing to this impossibility to
-reflect that my surprise did not increase, but remained stationary and
-calm. It would doubtless soon have become immoderate, and would have
-changed to stupor and terror, had I retained the use of my mind, so
-greatly was the scene which I was witnessing different from what it
-should be. Everything about me was to me new, unknown, and foreign.
-The trees and the lawns which I was in the habit of seeing daily had
-vanished. Where, on the day before, the tall grey buildings of the
-avenue stood out against the sky, there now stretched a fanciful line
-of brick cottages surrounded by gardens. I dared not look round to
-ascertain whether my own house still existed, and so I went straight
-towards the Porte Dauphine. I found it not. I took a street which was,
-so it seemed to me, the old road to Suresnes. The houses flanking
-it, of strange style and new form, too small to be occupied by rich
-people, were nevertheless embellished with pictures, sculptures, and
-brilliant potteries. A covered terrace surmounted them. I followed
-this rural road, whose curves produced enchanting perspectives. It
-was crossed obliquely by other sinuous ways. Neither trains, nor
-automobiles, nor vehicles of any kind went by. Shadows flitted over
-the soil. I looked upwards and saw masses of huge birds and enormous
-fishes glide rapidly through the upper atmosphere, which seemed to
-be a combination of heaven and ocean. Near the Seine, the course of
-which was altered, I came across a crowd of men clad in short blouses
-knotted at the waist, and wearing long gaiters. To all appearance they
-were in their working clothes. But their gait was lighter and more
-elegant than that of our workmen. I noticed women among them. What had
-heretofore prevented my recognising them as such was that they were
-dressed like the men, that they had long and straight legs, and, so it
-seemed to me, the narrow hips of American women. Although these folk
-did not present a savage appearance, I looked at them with fright.
-They presented to my gaze a more foreign appearance than any of the
-numerous strangers I had so far met upon the earth. In order to avoid
-seeing another human face, I turned down a deserted lane. Very soon I
-came to a circus planted with masts from which flew crimson oriflammes
-bearing in letters of gold the words: EUROPEAN FEDERATION. Placards
-in large frames ornamented with emblems of peace hung at the foot of
-the masts. They embodied announcements regarding popular festivals,
-legal injunctions, and works of public interest. In addition to balloon
-time-tables was a chart of the atmospheric currents drawn on the 28th
-of June of the year 220 of the Federation of Nations. All these texts
-were printed in characters new to me, and in a language of which I did
-not understand all the words. The while I was attempting to decipher
-them, the shadows of the countless machines cleaving the air flitted
-across my vision. Once more did I gaze upwards, and in this sky altered
-beyond recognition, more densely populated than the earth, cloven by
-rudders and threshed by screws, towards which a circle of smoke rose
-from the horizon, I perceived the sun. I felt like crying on seeing
-it. It was the only familiar figure which I had come across since
-morning. From its altitude I judged that it was about ten o’clock of
-the forenoon. Of a sudden I was surrounded by a second crowd of men
-and women, similar in appearance and in costume to the first. I was
-confirmed in the impression that the women, although some of them were
-very plump, others very skinny, and many beggared description, were
-on the whole androgynous in appearance. The crowd went its way. The
-open space once more was desert, just as our suburban quarters,
-which only come to life on the exodus from the workshops. I remained
-behind in front of the placards and read once more the date--the
-28th of June of the year 220 of the European Federation. What did it
-mean! A proclamation by the Federal Committee, on the occasion of
-the festival of the Earth, furnished me with timely and useful data
-for comprehension of that date. This is what I read: ‘Comrades, you
-are aware how, in the last year of the twentieth century, the old
-order collapsed in a fearful cataclysm, and how, after fifty years of
-anarchy, the federation of the peoples of Europe was organised....”
-The year 220 of the federation of peoples was therefore the year 2270
-of the Christian Era; this was certainly a fact which remained to be
-explained. How came it that of a sudden I found myself transported to
-the year 2270?
-
-“I mused over the circumstance as I strolled at haphazard.
-
-“‘I have not, as far as I know,’ I said to myself, ‘been preserved
-for so many years in the mummy state, like Colonel Fougas. I have
-not driven the machine with which Mr. H. G. Wells explores time. And
-if, following the example of William Morris, I have, while asleep,
-skipped three and a half centuries, I am unaware of the fact, since,
-when dreaming, one does not know that one is doing so. I am utterly
-convinced that I am not asleep.’
-
-“While indulging in these musings and others not worth recording,
-I was following a long street bordered with railings behind which
-pink-hued houses of various styles, but all equally small, smilingly
-peeped through the foliage. At times I perceived huge circuses of
-steel standing out in the landscape, and crowned with flames and
-smoke. Terror planed over these regions to which no name can be
-given, while the vibrating rush of air caused by the rapid flight of
-the machines resounded painfully through my brain. The street led to
-a meadow studded with clumps of trees and intersected by rivulets.
-Cows were pasturing in it. Just as my eyes were feasting upon the
-freshness of the scene I fancied I saw in front of me shadows flitting
-along a smooth and straight road. The whirlwind engendered by them,
-as they passed me, fanned my cheeks. I saw that they were trams and
-automobiles, real transparencies in their rapidity.
-
-“I crossed the road by a foot-bridge, and for a long time I sauntered
-through small meadows and woodlands. I thought I was in the open
-country, when I discovered an extensive frontage of resplendent
-houses bordering on the park. Soon, I found myself opposite a palace
-of an airy style of architecture. A sculptured and painted frieze,
-representing a largely attended feast, stretched across the vast
-façade. I perceived, through the panes of the bay-windows, men and
-women seated in a large and bright room around long marble tables,
-laden with prettily painted potteries. I entered, under the impression
-that this was a restaurant. I was not hungry, but weary, and the
-coolness of the room, artistically hung with garlands of fruit,
-appeared to me delicious. A man who stood by the door asked me for my
-voucher, and, as I showed embarrassment, he remarked:
-
-“‘I see, comrade, that you are not of these parts. How is it that you
-are travelling without vouchers! Very sorry, but it is impossible for
-me to admit you. Go and seek the delegate who hires journeymen; or, if
-you are too weak to work, address yourself to the delegate who attends
-to those who need succour.’
-
-“I informed him that I was nowise unfit for work, and drew away. A
-stout fellow, who was picking his teeth, said to me obligingly:
-
-“‘Comrade, you need not go to the delegate who engages journeymen. I am
-the delegate attached to the bakery of the section. We are one comrade
-short. Come along with me. You shall be put to work at once.’
-
-“I thanked the corpulent comrade, assured him of my willingness,
-pointing out, however, that I was not a baker.
-
-“He looked at me with some surprise, and told me that he could see I
-enjoyed a joke.
-
-“I followed him. We stopped in front of an immense cast-iron building
-having a monumental gateway, on the pediment of which a couple of
-bronze giants were resting on their elbows--the Sower and the Reaper.
-Their bodies expressed strength unstrained. A calm pride irradiated
-their faces, and they carried high their heads; in this, greatly
-dissimilar to the fierce-looking workers of the Flemish Constantin
-Meunier. We entered a room forty mètres in height, wherein, amid clouds
-of a light whitish dust, machinery was working with a sonorous and calm
-hum. Under the metallic dome, bags tendered themselves spontaneously
-to the knife which disembowelled them; the flour which escaped from
-them dropped into troughs where powerful hands of steel kneaded it
-into dough which flowed into moulds, which when full hastened to put
-themselves of their own accord into an oven as capacious and deep as
-a tunnel. Five or six men at most, motionless amid all this motion,
-supervised the labour of the machinery.
-
-“‘’Tis an old bakery,’ said my companion. ‘It hardly produces more than
-eighty thousand loaves a day, and its too weak machines employ too many
-hands. It matters little. Come up to the place where the goods arrive.’
-
-“I did not have the time to ask for a more explicit command. A lift
-had deposited me on the platform. Hardly had I reached it, when a kind
-of flying whale alighted close to me and unloaded a number of sacks.
-No human being was aboard this machine. Other flying whales brought
-more sacks which they unloaded, and which offered themselves up in
-succession to the knife which ripped them open. The screws revolved,
-and the rudder did its work. There was no one at the helm, nobody
-aboard the machine. I could hear in the distance the slight hum of
-a wasp flying, and then the thing grew with astounding rapidity. It
-seemed quite sure of itself, but my ignorance as to what would happen,
-should it perchance go wrong, caused me to shudder. I was several times
-tempted to ask to be allowed to go down again. A false shame prevented
-me. I stood my ground. The sun was disappearing on the horizon, and it
-was about five o’clock when the lift came up for me. The day’s work was
-over. I was given a voucher for board and lodging.
-
-“The rotund comrade remarked to me:
-
-“‘You must be hungry. You may, if you wish, take your evening meal at
-the public table. If you prefer eating by yourself in your own room,
-you may likewise do so. If you prefer supping at my place, together
-with a few comrades, say so at once. I am going to telephone to the
-culinary workshop that your rations be sent to you. I am telling you
-all this in order to set you at ease, for you seem like a fish out of
-water. You have no doubt come from afar. You do not look as if you
-could take care of yourself. To-day, your task has been an easy one.
-Do not, however, imagine that one’s livelihood is earned every day as
-cheaply as that. If the Ƶ-rays which directed the balloons had worked
-badly, as will sometimes happen, your task would not have been so easy.
-What is your particular line, and where do you come from?’
-
-“These questions embarrassed me greatly. I could not tell him the
-truth. I could not inform him that I was a bourgeois, and that I had
-come from the twentieth century. He would have thought me crazy. I
-replied in a vague and embarrassed manner that I had no trade, and that
-I came from far, from very far.
-
-“He smiled, and said:
-
-“‘I understand. You dare not admit it. You come from the United States
-of Africa. You are not the only European who has thus given us the
-slip. But nearly all these deserters end by coming back to us.’
-
-“I answered not a word, and my silence led him to believe that he had
-guessed aright. He renewed his invitation to supper, and asked me my
-name. I informed him that I was known as Hippolyte Dufresne. He seemed
-surprised at my having two names.
-
-“‘My name is Michel,’ he said.
-
-“Then, after a minute inspection of my straw hat, my jacket, my shoes,
-and the rest of my costume, which was no doubt somewhat dusty, but of a
-good cut, for after all I do not have my clothes made by a tailor who
-acts as hall-porter in the Rue des Acacias, he continued:
-
-“‘Hippolyte, I see whence you have come. You have lived in the black
-provinces. Nowadays there are only Zulus and Basutos to weave cloth so
-badly, to give so grotesque a shape to a suit, to make such ill-shapen
-footgear, and to stiffen linen with starch. It is only among them that
-you can have learnt to shave off your beard, while preserving on your
-face a moustache, and two little whiskers. This custom of scissoring
-the hair of the face, so as to form figures and ornaments, is the last
-word of tattooing, nowadays in vogue only among the Basutos and Zulus.
-These black provinces of the United States of Africa are wallowing in a
-state of barbarism resembling in many aspects the state of France three
-or four hundred years ago.’
-
-“I accepted Michel’s invitation.
-
-“‘I live quite close to here, in Sologne,’ he said. ‘My aeroplane scuds
-along fairly well. We shall soon be there.’
-
-“He made me take a seat under the belly of a huge mechanical bird, and
-we were soon cleaving the air so rapidly that I lost breath. The aspect
-of the countryside was vastly different from the one known to me. All
-the roads were bordered with houses; countless canals intersected the
-fields with their silvery lines. As I sat wrapt in admiration, Michel
-remarked to me:
-
-“‘The land is fairly well exploited, and cultivation is “intense,” as
-they say, since chemists are themselves agriculturists. One has tried
-one’s best, and one has worked hard for the past three hundred years.
-The fact is that to make collectivism a reality it has been necessary
-to compel the soil to return four or five times more than it returned
-in the days of capitalistic anarchy. You, who have lived among the
-Zulus and Basutos, are aware that the necessaries of life are so scarce
-with them that were they to be divided among all it would amount to
-sharing poverty and not wealth. The super-abundant production which
-we have attained to is more especially due to the progress made by
-science. The almost total suppression of the urban classes has also
-been of great advantage to agriculture. The shopkeepers and the clerks
-have gone, some to the factory, others to the field.’
-
-“‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘You have suppressed the cities! What has become
-of Paris?’
-
-“‘Hardly any one lives there now,’ replied Michel. ‘The greater part
-of those hideous and insanitary five-storied houses, wherein dwelt
-the citizens of the closed era, have fallen in ruins, and have been
-suffered to remain in that condition. House-building was very poor in
-the twentieth century of that unhappy era. We have preserved some of
-the older and better constructed buildings and converted them into
-museums. We possess a large number of museums and libraries: it is
-there we seek instruction. We have also kept a portion of the remains
-of the Hôtel de Ville. It was an ugly and fragile building, but great
-things were carried out within its precincts. As we no longer have
-tribunals, commerce, and armies, we no longer have cities, so to
-speak. Nevertheless, the density of the population is much greater on
-certain points than on others, and in spite of the rapidity of means of
-communication, the mining and metallurgic centres are densely peopled.’
-
-“‘What is that you say?’ I asked him. ‘You have done away with the
-courts of law? Have you then suppressed crime and misdemeanour?’
-
-“‘Crime will last as long as old and gloomy humanity. But, the number
-of criminals has diminished with the number of the wretched. The
-suburbs of the great cities were the feeding-grounds of crime; we no
-longer have big cities. The wireless telephone makes the highways safe
-day and night. We are all provided with electric means of defence.
-As to misdemeanours, they were rather the result of the scruples of
-the judges than of the perversity of the accused. Now that we no
-longer possess lawyers and judges, and that justice is administered by
-citizens summoned in rotation, many misdemeanours have disappeared,
-doubtless because it is impossible to recognise them as such.’
-
-“In this fashion did Michel discourse while steering his aeroplane. I
-am recording the meaning of his words as exactly as I can. I regret my
-inability, owing to a lack of memory, and also from fear of not making
-myself understood, to reproduce his language in all its expressiveness
-and its movement. The baker and his contemporaries spoke a language
-astonishing me at first by the novelty of its vocabulary and syntax,
-and especially by its pithy and flowing construction.
-
-“Michel came to ground on the terrace of a modest but pleasing dwelling.
-
-“‘We have arrived,’ he said; ‘’tis here that I live. You will sup with
-comrades who, like myself, take an interest in statistics.’
-
-“‘What! You a statistician! I thought you were a baker.
-
-“‘I am a baker, six hours of the day. This is the duration of the day’s
-work as determined for nearly a century by the Federal Committee. The
-rest of the time I give up to statistical labours. It is the science
-which has stepped into history’s shoes. The historians of old related
-the brilliant deeds of the few. Ours register all that is produced and
-consumed.’
-
-“After having conducted me to a hydrotherapic closet established on
-the roof, Michel led me down-stairs to the dining-room lit up by
-electricity, entirely white, and ornamented only with a sculptured
-frieze of strawberry plants in bloom. A table in painted pottery was
-covered with dishes with a metallic glaze. Three persons sat at it.
-Michel named them to me.
-
-“‘Morin, Perceval, Chéron.’
-
-“These three individuals were all clad alike in rough-spun jackets,
-velvet breeches, and grey stockings. Morin wore a long white beard;
-Chéron’s and Perceval’s faces were callow. Their short hair and more
-especially the frankness of their looks gave them the appearance of
-young lads. Yet I felt sure that they were women. Perceval seemed to me
-rather pretty, although she was no longer very young. I thought Chéron
-altogether charming. Michel introduced me:
-
-“‘I have brought comrade Hippolyte, who also calls himself Dufresne, to
-meet you; he has lived among the half-breeds, in the black provinces
-of the United States of Africa. He could not get any dinner at eleven
-o’clock, and so he must have an appetite.’
-
-“I was indeed hungry. They helped me to tiny bits of food cut into
-squares, which were not unpleasant to the taste, however new to me. A
-variety of cheeses were on the table. Morin poured me out a glass of
-light beer, and informed me that I could drink to my heart’s content,
-as it did not contain any alcohol.
-
-“‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I am glad to see that you pay attention to
-the evils of alcohol.’
-
-“‘They have almost ceased to exist,’ answered Morin. ‘We succeeded in
-suppressing alcoholism before the end of the closed era. It would have
-otherwise been impossible to establish the new _régime_. An alcoholic
-proletariat is incapable of emancipation.’
-
-“‘Have you not also,’ I inquired, while tasting a strangely carved bit
-of food--‘have you not also perfected food?’
-
-“‘Comrade,’ replied Perceval, ‘you doubtless refer to chemical
-alimentation. So far, it has not made any great strides. ’Tis in
-vain that we send our chemists as delegates into the kitchen....
-Their tabloids are of no good. With the exception that we know how
-to compound properly caloric and nutritious foods, we feed almost as
-coarsely as the men of the closed era, and we enjoy it just as much.’
-
-“‘Our scientists,’ remarked Michel, ‘are seeking to establish a
-rational system of food.’
-
-“‘That’s childishness,’ said the young female Chéron. ‘No good result
-will be reached, as long as the big intestine, a useless and harmful
-organ, and the seat of microbian infection, has not been removed....
-This will come in time.’
-
-“‘In what way?’ I asked.
-
-“‘Simply by ablation. And this suppression, the result, in the first
-place, of an operation upon a sufficient number of individuals, will
-tend to establish itself by heredity, and will later on be common to
-the whole race.’
-
-“These people treated me humanely and conversed obligingly with me. But
-it was difficult for me to chime in with their manners and their ideas,
-while I noticed that I nowise interested them, and that they felt an
-absolute indifference towards my modes of thought. The more I showed
-them courtesies, the more I alienated their sympathies. Following
-upon my addressing a few compliments, albeit discreet and sincere, to
-Chéron, she no longer even deigned to look at me.
-
-“The meal over, addressing myself to Morin, who seemed to me
-intelligent and gentle, I said to him with a sincerity which indeed
-stirred me deeply:
-
-“‘Monsieur Morin, I am ignorant of all things, and I am suffering
-cruelly because of my lack of knowledge. I repeat to you that I come
-from far, from very far. Tell me, I entreat you, how the European
-Federation came into existence, and explain to me the present social
-system.’
-
-“Old Morin protested:
-
-“‘You are asking me for the history of three centuries. It would take
-me weeks, nay months. Moreover, there are many things I could not
-teach you, as I do not know them myself.’
-
-“I thereupon entreated him to lay before me a very concise summary, as
-is done in the case of school children.
-
-“Morin, flinging himself back in his arm-chair, began:
-
-“‘To ascertain how the present society was constituted, it is necessary
-to go back far into the past.
-
-“‘The crowning achievement of the twentieth century was the extinction
-of war.
-
-“‘The arbitration Congress of The Hague, instituted in the middle of
-barbarism, did not to any degree contribute towards the maintenance of
-peace. But another more efficacious institution came into existence at
-that time. Groups of deputies were formed in the various Parliaments,
-who entered into communication with one another, and who in course of
-time came to deliberate in common on international questions. Giving
-expression as they did to the peaceful aspirations of a growing crowd
-of electors, their resolutions carried great weight, and supplied food
-for reflection to the governments, the most absolute of which, if one
-sets aside Russia, had at that time learnt to reckon with popular
-sentiment. What surprises us nowadays is that no one discerned in
-those meetings of deputies come together from all countries the first
-attempt at an international parliament.
-
-“‘But then the party of violence was still powerful in the several
-empires, and even in the French Republic. And if the danger of the
-old-time dynastic and diplomatic wars determined upon at a green-baized
-table for the purpose of maintaining what was known as the European
-equilibrium was averted for all time, it was still to be dreaded,
-considering the unsatisfactory industrial condition affecting Europe,
-that the conflicting industrial interests might bring about some
-terrible conflagration.
-
-“‘The imperfectly organised proletariat, as yet without the
-consciousness of its strength, did not put an end to armed struggles
-between nations, but it limited their frequency and duration.
-
-“‘The last wars were the outcome of that mad fury of the old world
-known as the colonial policy. English, Russians, Germans, French, and
-Americans joined in rabid competition, in Asia and Africa, for the
-possession of zones of influence, as they said, wherein they could, on
-the basis of pillage and massacres, establish economic relations with
-the aborigines. They destroyed everything they could destroy in those
-two countries. Then followed the inevitable. The impoverished colonies
-which were expensive were retained and the prosperous ones lost. But
-mankind had to reckon, in Asia, with a small heroic nation, taught
-by Europe, which made itself respected by her. By so doing, Japan, in
-barbarous times, rendered a great service to humanity.
-
-“‘When at last that detestable period of colonisation came to an end,
-no further was there any war. Still the States continued keeping up
-armies.
-
-“‘Having so far explained matters, I shall proceed to lay before you,
-pursuant to your request, the origins of present-day society. It
-issued from the one preceding it. In moral just as in individual life
-forms generate one another. Capitalistic naturally enough produced
-collectivist society. At the commencement of the twentieth century
-of the closed era, a memorable industrial evolution took place. The
-slender production of small artisans whose all were their tools was
-followed by a great production financially supported by a new agent of
-marvellous power--capital. Here was a great social progress.’
-
-“‘What was a great social step in advance?’ I asked.
-
-“‘The capitalistic _régime_,’ replied Morin. ‘It brought humanity an
-untold source of wealth. By grouping the workers in considerable masses
-and multiplying their numbers it created the proletariat. By making the
-workers an immense State within the State it paved the way for their
-emancipation, and furnished them with the means of conquering power.
-
-“‘This _régime_, however, which was to be productive of such happy
-results in the future, was execrated by the workers, in whose ranks it
-made countless victims.
-
-“‘There exists no social benefit which has not been purchased at the
-cost of blood and tears. Moreover, this _régime_ which had enriched the
-whole world came within an ace of ruining it. After having increased
-production to a considerable extent, it failed in its endeavours to
-regulate it, and struggled hopelessly in the toils of inextricable
-difficulties.
-
-“‘You are not totally ignorant, comrade, of the economic disturbances
-which filled the twentieth century. During the last hundred years
-of the capitalistic domination, the disorder of production and the
-delirium of competition piled up disasters high. The capitalists and
-the masters vainly attempted, by means of gigantic combinations, to
-regulate production and to annihilate competition. Their ill-conceived
-undertakings were engulfed in an abyss of gigantic catastrophes.
-During those anarchical days, the fight between classes was blind
-and terrible. The proletariat, overwhelmed in the same ratio by its
-victories and its defeats, overwhelmed by the ruins of the edifice
-which it was pulling down on its own head, torn by fearful internal
-struggles, casting aside in its blind violence its best leaders and
-most trustworthy friends, fought on without system and in the dark.
-It was, however, continually winning some advantage: an increase of
-wages, shorter hours of work, a growing freedom of organisation and
-of propaganda, the conquest of public power, and making progress in
-the dumfounded public mind. It was looked upon as wrecked through its
-divisions and mistakes. But all great parties are at odds, and all
-commit blunders. The proletariat had on its side the force of events.
-Towards the end of the century it attained the degree of well-being
-which opens the way to better things. Comrade, a party must have
-within itself a certain strength in order to accomplish a revolution
-favourable to its interests. Towards the end of the twentieth century
-of the closed era the general situation had become most favourable
-to the developments of socialism. The standing armies, more and more
-reduced during the course of the century, were abolished, following
-upon a desperate opposition of the powers that were, and of the
-bourgeoisie owning all things, by Chambers born of universal suffrage
-under the fiery pressure of the people of the cities and of the
-country. For a long time past already, the chiefs of State had retained
-their armies, less in view of a war which they no longer dreaded or
-could hope for, than to hold in check the multitude of proletaries
-at home. In the end, they yielded. Militias imbued with socialistic
-ideas supplanted regular armies. It was not without good cause that
-the governments showed opposition. No longer defended by guns and
-rifles, the monarchical systems succumbed in succession, and Republican
-Government stepped into their places. Alone, England, who had
-previously established a _régime_ considered endurable by the workers,
-and Russia, who had remained Imperialist and theocratic, stood outside
-the pale of this great movement. It was feared that the Czar, who felt
-towards republican Europe the sentiments which the French Revolution
-had inspired the great Catherine with, might raise armies to combat
-it. But his government had reached a degree of weakness and imbecility
-which only an absolute monarchy can attain. The Russian proletariat,
-joining hands with the intellectuals, rose in revolt, and after an
-awful succession of outrages and massacres, power passed into the hands
-of the revolutionaries, who established the representative system.
-
-“‘Telegraphy and wireless telephony were then in use from one end of
-Europe to the other, and so easy of use that the poorest of individuals
-could speak, whenever he wished, and give utterance to whatever he
-saw fit to a fellow creature living in any corner of the globe.
-Collectivist ideas rained down on Moscow. The Russian peasants could
-listen in their beds to the speeches of their comrades of Marseilles
-and Berlin. Simultaneously, the approximate steering of balloons and
-the exact course of flying-machines came into practical use. The result
-was the abolition of frontiers. This was the most critical moment of
-all. The patriotic instinct took a fresh life in the hearts of the
-nations so near uniting and fusing into one boundless humanity. In
-all countries, and at one and the same time, the nationalist faith,
-rekindled, emitted flashes of light. As there were no longer any kings,
-armies, or aristocracy, this great movement assumed a tumultuous and
-popular character. The French Republic, the German Republic, the
-Hungarian Republic, the Roman Republic, the Italian Republic, and even
-the Swiss and Belgian Republics, each expressed by a unanimous vote
-of their respective Parliaments, and at largely attended meetings,
-the solemn resolve to defend against all foreign aggression national
-territory and industry. Stringent laws were promulgated repressing
-the smuggling by flying-machines, and regulating severely the use
-of wireless telegraphy. The militia was everywhere reorganised and
-brought back to the old type of standing armies. Once more did the
-former uniforms, boots, dolmans, and generals’ plumes make their
-appearance. Fur busbies were anew welcomed with the applause of Paris.
-All the shopkeepers and a portion of the workmen donned the tricolour
-cockade. In all foundry districts, cannon and armour-plates were once
-more forged. Terrible wars were anticipated. This mad spurt lasted
-three years, without matters coming to a clash, and then it slackened
-imperceptibly. The militias gradually recovered the bourgeois aspect
-and feeling. The union of nations, which had seemed postponed to a
-fabled remoteness, was near at hand. Pacific efforts were developing
-day by day; collectivists were gradually achieving the conquest of
-society. The day came at last when the defeated capitalists abandoned
-the field to them.’
-
-“‘What a change!’ I exclaimed. ‘History cannot show another example of
-such a revolution.’
-
-“‘You may well imagine, comrade,’ resumed Morin, ‘that collectivism
-did not make its appearance till the appointed hour. The Socialists
-could not have suppressed capital and individual property had not those
-two forms of wealth been already all but destroyed _de facto_ by the
-efforts of the proletariat, and still more so by the fresh developments
-of science and industry.
-
-“‘It had indeed been thought that Germany would be the first
-collectivist State; the Labour Party had there been organised for
-about one hundred years, and it was everywhere said: ‘Socialism is a
-thing German?’ Still, France, less well prepared, got the start of
-her. The social revolution broke out in the first place at Lyons,
-Lille, and Marseilles, to the strains of _l’Internationale_. Paris held
-aloof for a fortnight, and then hoisted the red flag. It was only on
-the following day that Berlin proclaimed the collectivist state. The
-triumph of socialism had as a result the union of nations.
-
-“‘The delegates of all the European Republics, sitting in Brussels,
-proclaimed the Constitution of the United States of Europe.
-
-“‘England refused to form part of it, but she declared herself its
-ally. While having become socialistic, she had retained her king,
-her lords, and even the wigs of her judges. Socialism was at that
-time supreme ruler in Oceania, China, Japan, and in a portion of
-the vast Russian Republic. Black Africa, which had entered upon the
-capitalistic phase, formed a confederation of little homogeneity. The
-American Union had a while ago renounced mercantile militarism. The
-condition of the world was consequently favourable, upon the whole,
-to the free development of the United States of Europe. Nevertheless,
-this union, welcomed with delirious joy, was followed for the space
-of half a century by economic disturbances and social miseries. There
-were no longer any armies, and hardly any militias; in consequence
-of not being constricted, popular movements did not take the form of
-violent outbreaks. But the inexperience or the ill-will of the local
-governments was fostering a ruinous state of disorder.
-
-“‘Fifty years after the constitution of the States, the disappointments
-were so cruel, and the difficulties seemed to such a degree
-insurmountable, that the most optimistic spirits were beginning
-to despair. Smothered crackings foretold in all directions the
-dismemberment of the Union. It was then that the dictatorship of a
-committee composed of fourteen workmen put an end to anarchy, and
-organised the Federation of European nations as it exists to-day. There
-are those who say that the Fourteen displayed unparalleled genius and
-relentless energy; others claim that they were mediocrities terrified
-and influenced by the stress of necessity, and that they presided as
-if in spite of themselves over the spontaneous organisation of the
-new social forces. It is at all events certain that they did not go
-against the tide of events. The organisation which they established, or
-witnessed the establishment of, still subsists almost in its entirety.
-The production and consumption of goods are nowadays carried out, to
-all purposes, according to the rules laid down in those days. The new
-era justly dates from that time.’
-
-“Morin then expounded to me most succinctly the principles of modern
-society.
-
-“‘It rests,’ said he, ‘on the total suppression of individual
-property.’
-
-“‘Is not this intolerable to you?’ I asked.
-
-“‘Why should we find it unendurable, Hippolyte? In Europe, formerly,
-the State collected the taxes. It disposed of resources proper to it.
-Nowadays it can be said with an equal degree of truth that it possesses
-everything, while possessing nothing. It is still more exact to say
-that it is we who own all things, since the State is not a thing apart
-from us, and is merely the expression of collectiveness.’
-
-“‘But,’ I asked, ‘do you not possess anything proper to yourself? Not
-even the plates out of which you eat, nor your bed, your bed-sheets,
-your clothes?’
-
-“Morin smiled at my question.
-
-“‘You are a deal more simple than I dreamt, Hippolyte. What! You
-imagine that we are not the owners of our personal property. What can
-well be your idea of our tastes, our instincts, our needs, and our mode
-of living? Do you take us for monks, as was said in the olden days, for
-men destitute of all individual character and incapable of affixing
-a personal impress on our surroundings? You are mistaken, my friend,
-altogether mistaken. We hold as our own the objects destined to our use
-and comfort, and we feel more attached to them than were the bourgeois
-of the closed era to their knick-knacks, for our taste is keener, and
-we possess a livelier sentiment of form. All our comrades of some
-refinement own works of art, and take great pride in them. Chéron has
-in her home paintings which are her delight, and she would take it
-amiss were the Federal Committee to contest with her the possession of
-them. Personally, I preserve in that closet some ancient drawings, the
-almost complete work of Steinlen, one of the most highly prized artists
-of the closed era. Neither silver nor gold would tempt me to part with
-them.
-
-“‘Whence have you come, Hippolyte? You are told that our society is
-based on the total suppression of individual property, and you get into
-your head that such suppression covers goods and chattels, and articles
-in daily use. But, you simple-minded fellow, the individual property
-totally suppressed by us is the ownership of the means of production,
-soil, canals, roads, mines, material, plant, &c. It does not affect
-lamps and arm-chairs. What we have done away with is the possibility of
-diverting to the benefit of an individual or of a group of individuals
-the fruits of labour; ’tis not the natural and harmless possession of
-the beloved chattels about us.’
-
-“Morin next enlightened me as to the distribution of intellectual and
-manual labours among all the members of the community, in conformity
-with their aptitudes.
-
-“‘Collectivist society,’ he went on to say, ‘differs not only from
-capitalistic society in the fact that in the former everybody works.
-During the closed era, the people who toiled not were in great numbers;
-still, they constituted the minority. Our society differs more
-especially from the former in that labour was not properly classified,
-and that many useless tasks were performed. The workers produced
-without systematic order, method, and concerted action. The cities
-were full of officials, magistrates, merchants, and clerks, who worked
-without producing. There were also the soldiers. The fruits of labour
-were not properly distributed. The customs and tariffs established
-for the purpose of remedying the evil merely aggravated matters. All
-were suffering. Production and consumption are now minutely regulated.
-Lastly, our society differs from the old one in that we enjoy all the
-benefits derived from machinery, the use of which, in the capitalistic
-age, was so frequently disastrous for the workers.’
-
-“I asked him how it had been possible to constitute a society composed
-wholly of workmen.
-
-“Morin pointed out to me that man’s aptitude for work is general, and
-that it constitutes one of the essential characteristics of the race.
-
-“‘In barbarian times,’ he said, ‘and right until the end of the closed
-era, the aristocratic and wealthy classes always showed a preference
-for manual labour. They put their intellectual faculties to an
-infinitesimal use, and in exceptional instances at that. Their tastes
-always inclined towards such occupations as the chase and war, wherein
-the body plays a greater part than the mind. They rode, drove, fenced,
-and practised pistol-shooting. It may therefore be said of them that
-they worked with their hands. Their work was either sterile or harmful,
-for the reason that a certain prejudice forbade them to engage in any
-useful or beneficent work, and also, because in their day, useful work
-was most often carried out under ignoble and disgusting conditions. It
-did not prove so very difficult to impart a taste for work to every one
-by reinstating it in a position of honour. The men of the barbaric ages
-took pride in carrying a gun or wearing a sword. The men of to-day are
-proud of handling a spade or a hammer. Humanity rests on a foundation
-which undergoes but little change.’
-
-“Morin having told me that the very memory of all monetary circulation
-had become lost, I asked him:
-
-“‘How then do you carry on business without cash payments?’
-
-“‘We exchange products by means of vouchers similar to those just given
-you, comrade, and they correspond to the hours of labour performed
-by us. The value of the products is computed by the length of time
-their production has taken. Bread, meat, beer, clothes, an aeroplane,
-represent _x_ hours, _x_ days of labour. From each of these vouchers,
-collectivism, or, as it was styled formerly, the State, deducts a
-certain number of minutes for the purpose of allocating them to
-unproductive works, metallurgic and alimentary reserves, refuges and
-private asylums, and so forth.’
-
-“‘These minutes,’ interjected Michel, ‘are continually increasing
-apace. The Federal Committee orders far too many great works, the
-burden of which is thus on our shoulders. The reserve stocks are far
-too considerable. The public warehouses are crowded to overflowing with
-riches of all sorts. ’Tis our minutes of labour which are entombed
-there. Many abuses are still in existence.’
-
-“‘No doubt,’ replied Morin, ‘there is room for improvement. The wealth
-of Europe, which has accrued through general methodical labour, is
-untold.’
-
-“I was curious to learn whether these folk had no other measurement of
-labour than the time required for its accomplishment, and whether in
-their case the day’s work of the navvy or of the journeyman tempering
-plaster ranked with that of the chemist or the surgeon. I put the
-question frankly.
-
-“‘What a silly question,’ exclaimed Perceval.
-
-“Nevertheless old Morin vouchsafed to enlighten me.
-
-“‘All works of study, of research, in fact all works contributing to
-render life better and more beautiful are encouraged in our workshops
-and laboratories. The collectivist State fosters the higher studies. To
-study is akin to producing, since nothing is produced without study.
-Study, just as much as work, entitles one to existence. Those who
-devote themselves to long and arduous research secure unto themselves
-a peaceful and respected existence. It takes a sculptor a fortnight
-to make the _maquette_ of a figure, but he has worked five years to
-learn modelling. Now the State has paid him for his _maquette_ during
-those five years. A chemist discovers in a few hours the particular
-properties of a body. But he has spent months in isolating this body,
-and years in fitting himself to become capable of such an undertaking.
-During the whole of that time he has lived at the expense of the State.
-A surgeon removes a tumour in ten minutes. This is the result of
-fifteen years of study and practice. He has, as a consequence, received
-vouchers from the State for fifteen years past. Every man who gives in
-a month, in an hour, in a few minutes, the product of his whole life,
-is merely repaying in a lump sum what collectivism has given him day by
-day.’
-
-“‘Without reckoning,’ said Perceval, ‘that our great intellectuals,
-our surgeons, our lady doctors, our chemists, know full well how to
-derive profit from their works and discoveries, and to add beyond
-measure to their enjoyments. They cause to be allotted to themselves
-aerial machines of 60 h.p., palaces, gardens, and immense parks. They
-are, for the greater part, individuals keenly alive to laying hold of
-the world’s goods, and lead a more splendid and more copious existence
-than the bourgeois of the closed era. The worst of it is that the
-majority of them are stupid fools who should be recruited for work at
-the flour-mills, like Hippolyte.’
-
-“I bowed my thanks. Michel approved Perceval, and bitterly lamented the
-accommodating mind of the State in its system of fattening chemists at
-the expense of the other workers.
-
-“I asked whether the negotiation of the vouchers did not bring about a
-rise and fall.
-
-“‘Speculation in vouchers,’ replied Morin, ‘is prohibited. As a matter
-of fact, it cannot be prevented altogether. There are among us, just as
-formerly, avaricious and prodigal, laborious and idle, rich and poor,
-happy and miserable, contented and discontented men. Yet all manage to
-exist, and that is already something.’
-
-“I fell a-musing for a while; then I remarked:
-
-“‘Monsieur Morin, if one is to believe you, it seems to me that you
-have realised equality and fraternity, as much as possible. But, I
-fear that it is at the expense of liberty, which I have learnt to
-cherish as the best of things.’
-
-“Morin shrugged his shoulders, saying:
-
-“‘We have not established equality. We know what it means. We have
-secured a livelihood for all. We have placed labour on a pedestal of
-honour. After that, if the bricklayer thinks himself superior to the
-poet, and the poet to the bricklayer, ’tis their business. Every one
-of our workers imagines that his form of labour is the grandest in the
-world. The advantages of this idea are greater than the disadvantages.
-
-“‘Comrade Hippolyte, you seem to have delved deeply into the books
-of the nineteenth century of the closed era; their leaves are hardly
-turned nowadays: you speak their language, to us a foreign tongue.
-It is hard for us to realise nowadays that the bygone friends of the
-people should have adopted as their motto: _Liberty_, _Equality_,
-_Fraternity_. Liberty has no place in society, since it does not exist
-in nature. There is no free animal. It was said formerly that a man who
-obeyed the laws was free. This was childish. Moreover, so strange a
-use was made of the word liberty in the last days of the capitalistic
-anarchy that the word has ended in merely expressing the setting claim
-to privileges. The idea of equality is still less reasonable, and it
-is an unfortunate idea in that it presupposes a false ideal. We have
-not to seek whether men are equal among themselves. What we must see to
-is that each one shall supply his best and receive all necessaries of
-life. As to fraternity, we know only too well how brothers have acted
-towards brothers during the course of centuries. We do not pretend to
-say that men are bad. We do not say that they are good. They are what
-they are, but they live in peace, when there are no longer any reasons
-for them to fight one another. We have but a single word to express our
-social system. We say that we live in harmony. Now it is an assured
-fact that all human forces act in concert nowadays.’
-
-“‘In the centuries,’ I said to him, ‘of what you style the closed
-era, one preferred the possession of things to their enjoyment. I can
-conceive that, reversing the order of things, you prefer enjoyment to
-possession. But is it not distressing to you not to have any property
-to leave to your children?’
-
-“‘In capitalistic times,’ replied Morin with animation, ‘how many
-were there who left inheritances? One in a thousand; nay, one in ten
-thousand. Nor must it be forgotten that many generations did not enjoy
-the faculty of bequeathing. Be this as it may, the transmission of
-fortune through the medium of inheritances was perfectly conceivable
-when the family was in existence. But now....’
-
-“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘you have no family ties?’
-
-“My surprise, which I had not been able to conceal, seemed comical to
-the woman-comrade Chéron.
-
-“‘We are quite aware,’ she said to me, ‘that marriage exists among
-the Kaffirs. We European women do not bind ourselves by promises; or,
-if we make them, the law does not take cognisance of them. We are of
-opinion that the whole destiny of a human being should not hang on a
-word. Nevertheless, there survives a relic of the customs of the closed
-era. When a woman gives herself, she swears fidelity on the horns of
-the moon. In reality, neither the man nor the woman takes any binding
-engagement. Yet it is not of rare occurrence that their union endures
-as long as life. Neither of them would wish to be the object of a
-fidelity secured by means of an oath, instead of by physical and moral
-expediency. We owe nothing to anybody. Formerly, a man convinced a
-woman that she belonged to him. We are less simple-minded. We believe
-that a human being belongs to itself alone. We give ourselves when we
-please, and to whom we see fit.
-
-“‘Moreover, we feel no shame in yielding to desire. We are no
-hypocrites. Only four hundred years ago, physiology was a sealed book
-to men, and their ignorance was the cause of dire illusions and cruel
-deceptions. Hippolyte, whatever the Kaffirs may say, society must be
-subordinate to nature, and not, as too long has been the case, nature
-to society?’
-
-“Perceval, endorsing the speech of her comrade, added:
-
-“‘To show you how the sex question is regulated in our society, I must
-tell you, Hippolyte, that in many factories the recruiting delegate
-does not even inquire about one’s sex. The sex of an individual does
-not interest collectivism.’
-
-“‘But the children?’
-
-“‘Well? The children?’
-
-“‘Not having any family ideal, are they not neglected?’
-
-“‘Whence did you get such an idea? Maternal love is a most powerful
-instinct in woman. In the hideous society of the past, mothers were to
-be seen courting misery and shame, in order to bring up illegitimate
-offspring. Why should ours, exempt as they are from shame and misery,
-forsake their little ones? There are among us many good partners, and
-many good mothers. But there is a very large number, which increases
-apace, of women who dispense with men.’
-
-“Chéron made in this connection a somewhat strange remark.
-
-“‘We have in regard to sexual characteristics,’ she said, ‘notions
-undreamt of in the barbaric simplicity of the men of the closed era.
-False conclusions were for a long time drawn from the fact that there
-are two sexes, and two only. It was therefrom concluded that a woman
-is absolutely female, and a man absolutely male. In reality, it is not
-thus; there are women who are very much women, while others are very
-little so. These differences, formerly concealed by the costume and
-the mode of life, and disguised by prejudice, make themselves clearly
-manifest in our society. More than that, they become accentuated and
-more marked with each succeeding generation. Ever since women have
-worked like men, and acted and thought like them, many are to be found
-who resemble men. We may some day reach the point of creating neutrals,
-and produce female workers, as in the case of bees. It will prove a
-great benefit, for it will become possible to increase the quantity of
-work without increasing the population in a degree out of proportion to
-the necessaries of life. We entertain the same dread of a deficit in
-and a surplus of births.’
-
-“I thanked Perceval and Chéron for having kindly supplied me with
-information on so interesting a subject, and I inquired whether
-education was not neglected in collectivist society, and whether
-speculative science and the liberal arts still flourished.
-
-“The following is old Morin’s reply to my question:
-
-“‘Education, in all its degrees, is highly developed. The comrades all
-know something; they do not know the same things, nor have they learnt
-anything useless. No longer is any time lost in the study of law and
-theology. Each one selects from the arts and sciences what suits him.
-We still possess many ancient works, although the greater part of the
-works printed before the new era have perished. Books are still printed
-in greater quantity than ever. And yet typography is on the point of
-disappearing. Phonography will take its place. Poets and novelists are
-already being published phonographically, while in connection with
-theatrical plays, a most ingenious combination of the phono and the
-cinemato rendering both the voice and the play of the actors has been
-devised.’
-
-“‘You have then poets and playwrights?’
-
-“‘We not only have poets, but a poetry of our own. We are the first
-who have delimitated the domain of poetry. Previous to our time, many
-ideas which could have been better expressed in prose were expressed
-in verse. Narratives were unfolded in rhyme. This was a survival of
-the days when legislative enactments and recipes of rural economy
-were drawn up in measured terms. Nowadays poets merely sing delicate
-subjects which have no meaning, while their grammar and language are
-as proper to them as their rhythm and assonance. As to our stage, it
-is almost exclusively lyric. A precise knowledge of reality and a life
-void of violence have rendered us almost indifferent to drama and
-tragedy. The uniformity of the classes and the equality of the sexes
-have deprived the old comedy of nearly all its subject-matter. But
-never has music been so beautiful and so beloved. We especially admire
-the sonata and the symphony.
-
-“‘Our society is greatly predisposed in favour of the arts of design.
-Many prejudices harmful to painting have vanished. Our life is more
-limpid and more beautiful than the bourgeois life, and we have a
-vivid appreciation of form. Sculpture is in a still more flourishing
-condition than painting, ever since it has taken an intelligent part in
-the ornamentation of public buildings and private dwellings. Never was
-so much done towards the teaching of art. If you will but steer your
-aeroplane above one of our streets, you will be surprised at the number
-of schools and museums.’
-
-“‘To sum matters up, are you happy?’ I inquired.
-
-“Morin shook his head and replied:
-
-“‘It is not in human nature to enjoy perfect happiness. Happiness
-is not attainable without effort, and every effort brings with it
-fatigue and suffering. We have made life endurable to all. That is
-something. Our descendants will do better still. Our organisation is
-not immutable. Not fifty years ago, it was different from what it is
-to-day. Men endowed with subtile powers of observation believe that we
-are on the road to great changes. That may be. However, the forward
-steps in human civilisation will henceforth be harmonious and pacific.’
-
-“‘Do you not fear, on the contrary,’ I asked him, ‘that the
-civilisation with which you appear to be satisfied may be destroyed
-by an invasion of barbarians? There still remain in Asia and Africa,
-so you have told me, large black or yellow populations which have not
-entered into your concert. They have armies, while you have none. Were
-they to attack you...’
-
-“‘Our defence is assured. The Americans and the Australians alone could
-enter upon a struggle with us, for they are as learned as ourselves.
-But the ocean separates us and a community of interests makes us sure
-of their amity. As to the capitalistic negroes, they have not got any
-further than the steel cannon, fire-arms and all the old scrap-iron
-of the twentieth century. What could these ancient engines of war
-do against a discharge of Y-rays? Our frontiers are protected by
-electricity. A zone of lightning encircles the Federation. A little
-spectacled fellow is sitting I know not where, in front of a keyboard.
-He is our one and only soldier. He has but to touch a key in order to
-reduce to dust an army of 500,000 men.’
-
-“Morin ceased speaking for a moment; then he continued, speaking more
-deliberately:
-
-“‘Were our civilisation threatened, it would not be by any outside
-enemy. It would be by the enemies from within.’
-
-“‘There are such enemies, then?’
-
-“‘We have the anarchists. They are many, fiery, and intelligent. Our
-chemists and our professors of sciences and letters are almost to a man
-anarchists. They attribute to the regulation of labour and production
-the majority of the evils which still afflict society. They argue that
-humanity will not be happy except in the spontaneous harmony to be born
-of the total destruction of civilisation. They are dangerous. They
-would be still more so were we to repress them. To do this, however, we
-have neither the means nor the desire. We do not possess any power of
-coercion or repression, and we get along very well without it. In the
-barbaric ages, men nurtured great illusions in regard to the efficacy
-of penalties. Our fathers suppressed the judiciary system entirely.
-They no longer required it. With the suppression of private property,
-they simultaneously suppressed theft and swindling. Ever since we have
-carried electric protectors, assaults are no longer to be feared. Man
-has come to be respected by man. Crimes of passion are still and will
-ever be committed. However, such crimes as these, if left unpunished,
-become rarer. Our entire judiciary body is composed of elected
-arbitrators who try gratuitously all offences and disputes.’
-
-“‘I rose, and thanking my comrades for their kindness, I begged Morin
-the favour of putting one more question to him.
-
-“‘You no longer have any religion?’
-
-“‘Quite the contrary; we have a large number of religions, some of
-them somewhat novel. To mention France only, we have the religion
-of humanity, positivism, Christianity, and spiritualism. In some
-countries there are still some Catholics, but they are few and split up
-into sects, as the result of schisms which occurred in the twentieth
-century, when Church and State drifted apart. For a long time now there
-has not been any Pope.’
-
-“‘You are mistaken,’ said Michel. ‘There is still a Pope. It is by a
-mere chance that I know of him. He is Pius XXV., dyer, Via dell’ Orso,
-in Rome.’
-
-“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘the Pope is a dyer!’”
-
-“‘What is there surprising about that! He must perforce have a trade,
-just as everybody else.’
-
-“‘But his Church?’
-
-“‘He is recognised by a few thousands, in Europe.’
-
-“With these words, we parted. Michel informed me that I should find a
-lodging in the neighbourhood, and that Chéron would conduct me to it on
-her way home.
-
-“The night was illuminated with an opalescent light both powerful and
-soft. It gave the foliage the sheen of enamel. I walked by the side of
-Chéron.
-
-“I looked her over. Her flat-soled shoes gave firmness to her gait
-and balance to her body; although her male habiliments made her seem
-smaller than she was, and in spite of her having one hand in her
-pocket, her perfectly simple carriage did not lack dignity. She gazed
-freely to the right and left of her. She was the first woman in whom I
-had noticed the air of a curious and amused lounger. Her features, seen
-from under her tam-o’-shanter, were refined and strongly defined. She
-both irritated and charmed me. I was in dread that she might consider
-me stupid and ridiculous. It was, to say the least, plain that my
-personality inspired her with supreme indifference. Nevertheless, of
-a sudden she asked me what my trade might be. I answered at haphazard
-that I was an electrician.
-
-“‘So am I,’ she said.
-
-“I prudently put an end to the conversation.
-
-“Unheard-of sounds were filling the night air with their calm rhythmic
-noise, and I listened in affright to the respiration of the monstrous
-genius of this new world.
-
-“The more I looked at the female electrician, the more did I feel a
-desire for her, a desire fanned by a dash of antipathy.
-
-“‘So of course,’ I said to her of a sudden, ‘you have regulated love
-scientifically, and ’tis a matter which no longer causes any one
-uneasiness.’
-
-“‘You are mistaken,’ she replied. ‘We have naturally got beyond the mad
-imbecility of the closed era, and the whole domain of human physiology
-is henceforth freed from legal barbarisms and theological terrors. We
-are no longer the prey to an erroneous and cruel conception of duty.
-But the laws governing the attraction between body and body are still
-a mystery to us. The spirit of the species is what it ever was and
-ever shall be, violent and capricious. Now, just as formerly, instinct
-remains stronger than reason. Our superiority over the ancients lies
-less in the knowledge of it than in proclaiming it. We have within us a
-force capable of creating worlds, to wit, desire, and you would have us
-regulate it. ’Tis asking too much of us. We are no longer barbarians.
-We have not yet become wise. Collectivism altogether ignores all that
-appertains to sexual relations. These relations are what they may be,
-most often tolerable, rarely delicious, and at times horrible. But,
-comrade, do not imagine that love no longer troubles any one.’
-
-“I could not discuss such extraordinary ideas. I diverted the
-conversation to the temperament of women. Chéron informed me that there
-were three kinds, those who were amorously disposed, those prompted by
-curiosity, and the third, indifferent. I thereupon asked her to which
-class she belonged.
-
-“She looked at me somewhat haughtily and said:
-
-“‘There are also various kinds of men. First and foremost are the
-impertinent ones....’
-
-“Her reply caused her to appear far more contemporaneous than I had
-until then believed her to be. For that reason I began to speak to her
-the language used by me on similar occasions. After a few trifling and
-frivolous words I said to her:
-
-“‘Will you grant me a favour and tell me your first name?’
-
-“‘I have none?’
-
-“She perceived that this seemed to vex me, for she resumed with some
-show of pique:
-
-“‘Do you think that a woman must, in order to be pleasing to you,
-possess a first name, like the ladies of former days, a baptismal name
-such as Marguerite, Thérèse, or Jeanne?’
-
-“‘You are a living proof to the contrary.’
-
-“I sought her gaze, but it did not respond to mine. She seemed not to
-have heard. I could no longer entertain doubts: she was a coquette. I
-was delighted. I told her that I found her charming, that I loved her,
-and I told her so over and over again. She suffered me to go on with my
-speeches, and finally asked:
-
-“‘What do you mean by all this!’
-
-“I became more pressing.
-
-“‘She reproached me for taking liberties with her, exclaiming:
-
-“‘Your ways are those of a savage.’
-
-“‘I do not find acceptance with you?’
-
-“‘I do not say so.’
-
-“Chéron, Chéron, would it cost you any great effort to...’
-
-“We sat down together on a bench over which an elm cast its shade. I
-took her hand, and carried it to my lips ... of a sudden, I no longer
-felt, no longer saw anything, and I found myself lying in bed at home.
-I rubbed my eyes, smarting with the morning light, and I saw my valet
-who, standing before me with a stupid look, was saying to me:
-
-“It is nine o’clock, sir. You told me to wake you at nine o’clock, sir.
-I have come to tell you, sir, that it is nine o’clock?”
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-Hippolyte Dufresne was warmly congratulated by his friends on his
-finishing the reading of his story.
-
-Nicole Langelier, applying to him the words of Critias to Triephon,
-said:
-
-“You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people
-of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a
-night.”
-
-“It is not likely,” remarked Joséphin Leclerc, “that the future
-will be such as you have seen it. I do not wish for the coming of
-socialism, but I dread it not. Collectivism at the helm would be quite
-another thing than is imagined. Who was it who said, carrying back his
-thoughts to the time of Constantine and of the Church’s early triumphs:
-‘Christianity is triumphant, but its triumph is subject to the
-conditions imposed by life on all political and religious parties. All
-of them, whatever they may be, undergo so complete a transformation
-in the struggle that after victory there remains of themselves but the
-name and a few symbols of the last idea’?”
-
-“Must we then give up the idea of knowing the future?” asked M. Goubin.
-
-But Giacomo Boni, who when delving down into a few feet of soil had
-descended from the present period to the stone age, remarked:
-
-“Upon the whole, humanity changes little. What has been shall be.”
-
-“No doubt,” replied Jean Boilly, “man, or that which we call man,
-changes little. We belong to a definite species. The evolution of the
-species is of necessity included in the definition of the species. It
-is impossible to conceive humanity subsequent to its transformation. A
-transformed species is a lost species. But what reason is there for us
-to believe that man is the end of the evolution of life upon the earth?
-Why suppose that his birth has exhausted the creative forces of nature,
-and that the universal mother of the flora and fauna should, after
-having shaped him, become for ever barren. A natural philosopher, who
-does not stand in fear of his own ideas, H. G. Wells, has said: ‘Man
-is not final.’ No indeed, man is neither the beginning nor the end of
-terrestrial life. Long before him, all over the globe, animated forces
-were multiplying in the depths of the sea, in the mud of the strand,
-in the forests, lakes, prairies, and tree-topped mountains. After him,
-new forms will go on taking shape. A future race, born perhaps of our
-own, but having perchance no bond of origin with us, will succeed us in
-the empire of the planet. These new spirits of the earth will ignore or
-despise us. The monuments of our arts, should they discover vestiges of
-them, will have no meaning for them. Rulers of the future, whose mind
-we can no more divine than the palæopithekos of the Siwalik Mountains
-was able to forecast the trains of thought of Aristotle, Newton, and
-Poincaré.”
-
-
-THE END
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Note:
-
-Quotation marks have been standardised. Spelling and hyphenation have
-been retained as they appear in the original publication except as
-follows:
-
-  Page 8
-  Καὶ εμοιγε δοκειτε ἐπὶ λευκαδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείροων
-  καταδαρθεντες τοσαῡτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτός
-  ὄυσης. _changed to_
-  Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων
-  καταδαρθέντες τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς
-  οὔσης.
-
-  Page 63
-  since his tenous substance _changed to_
-  since his tenuous substance
-
-  Page 65
-  would facedeath for a _changed to_
-  would face death for a
-
-  Page 72
-  are quarelling over _changed to_
-  are quarrelling over
-
-  Page 111
-  and by a similiar _changed to_
-  and by a similar
-
-  Page 120
-  personages of the diologue are _changed to_
-  personages of the dialogue are
-
-  Page 184
-  it as absurd _changed to_
-  is as absurd
-
-  Page 191
-  were on the whole androginous in _changed to_
-  were on the whole androgynous in
-
-  Page 201
-  produced and consumed? _changed to_
-  produced and consumed.
-
-  Page 231
-  schisms which occured in _changed to_
-  schisms which occurred in
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Stone, by Anatole France
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49092 ***
+
+THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+  IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
+  EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN
+
+  THE WHITE STONE
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE STONE
+
+  BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+  A TRANSLATION BY
+  CHARLES E. ROCHE
+
+  LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+  NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMX
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO, LIMITED
+  Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAP.                       PAGE
+    I.                          9
+   II. GALLIO                  29
+  III.                        107
+   IV.                        147
+    V. THROUGH THE HORN
+       OR THE IVORY GATE      183
+   VI.                        237
+
+
+
+
+  Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων
+  καταδαρθέντες τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς
+  οὔσης.
+                      (Philopatris, xxi.)
+
+  And to me it seems that you have fallen asleep
+  upon a white rock, and in a parish of dreams, and
+  have dreamt all this in a moment while it was
+  night.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE STONE
+
+I
+
+
+A few Frenchmen, united in friendship, who were spending the spring in
+Rome, were wont to meet amid the ruins of the disinterred Forum. They
+were Joséphin Leclerc, an Embassy Attaché on leave; M. Goubin, licencié
+ès lettres, an annotator; Nicole Langelier, of the old Parisian family
+of the Langeliers, printers and classical scholars; Jean Boilly, a
+civil engineer, and Hippolyte Dufresne, a man of leisure, and a lover
+of the fine arts.
+
+Towards five o’clock of the afternoon of the first day of May, they
+wended their way, as was their custom, through the northern door,
+closed to the public, where Commendatore Boni, who superintended the
+excavations, welcomed them with quiet amenity, and led them to the
+threshold of his house of wood nestling in the shadow of laurel bushes,
+privet hedges and cytisus, and rising above the vast trench, dug down
+to the depth of the ancient Forum, in the cattle market of pontifical
+Rome.
+
+Here, they pause awhile, and look about them.
+
+Facing them rise the truncated shafts of the Columnæ Honorariæ, and
+where stood the Basilica of Julia, the eye rested on what bore the
+semblance of a huge draughts-board and its draughts. Further south, the
+three columns of the Temple of the Dioscuri cleave the azure of the
+skies with their blue-tinted volutes. On their right, surmounting the
+dilapidated Arch of Septimus Severus, the tall columns of the Temple
+of Saturn, the dwellings of Christian Rome, and the Women’s Hospital
+display in tiers, their facings yellower and muddier than the waters of
+the Tiber. To their left stands the Palatine flanked by huge red arches
+and crowned with evergreen oaks. At their feet, from hill to hill,
+among the flagstones of the Via Sacra, narrow as a village street,
+spring from the earth an agglomeration of brick walls and marble
+foundations, the remains of buildings which dotted the Forum in the
+days of Rome’s strength. Trefoil, oats, and the grasses of the field
+which the wind has sown on their lowered tops, have covered them with
+a rustic roof illumined by the crimson poppies. A mass of _débris_,
+of crumbling entablatures, a multitude of pillars and altars, an
+entanglement of steps and enclosing walls: all this indeed not stunted
+but of a serried vastness and within limits.
+
+Nicole Langelier was doubtless reviewing in his mind the host of
+monuments confined in this famed space:
+
+“These edifices of wise proportions and moderate dimensions,” he
+remarked, “were separated from one another by narrow streets full of
+shade. Here ran the _vicoli_ beloved in countries where the sun shines,
+while the generous descendants of Remus, on their return from hearing
+public speakers, found, along the walls of the temples, cool yet
+foul-smelling corners, whence the rinds of water-melons and castaway
+shells were never swept away, and where they could eat and enjoy their
+siesta. The shops skirting the square must certainly have emitted the
+pungent odour of onions, wine, fried meats, and cheese. The butchers’
+stalls were laden with meats, to the delectation of the hardy citizens,
+and it was from one of those butchers that Virginius snatched the knife
+with which he killed his daughter. There also were doubtless jewellers
+and vendors of little domestic tutelary deities, protectors of the
+hearth, the ox-stall, and the garden. The citizens’ necessaries of life
+were all centred in this spot. The market and the shops, the basilicas,
+_i.e._, the commercial Exchanges and the civil tribunals; the Curia,
+that municipal council which became the administrative power of the
+universe; the prisons, whose vaults emitted their much dreaded and
+fetid effluvia, and the temples, the altars, of the highest necessity
+to the Italians who have ever some thing to beg of the celestial powers.
+
+“Here it was, lastly, that during a long roll of centuries were
+accomplished the vulgar or strange deeds, almost ever flat and dull,
+oftentimes odious and ridiculous, at times generous, the agglomeration
+of which constitutes the august life of a people.”
+
+“What is it that one sees, in the centre of the square, fronting the
+commemorative pedestals?” inquired M. Goubin, who, primed with an
+eye-glass, had noticed a new feature in the ancient Forum, and was
+thirsting for information concerning it.
+
+Joséphin Leclerc obligingly answered him that they were the foundations
+of the recently unearthed colossal statue of Domitian.
+
+Thereupon he pointed out, one after the other, the monuments laid bare
+by Giacomo Boni in the course of his five years’ fruitful excavations:
+the fountain and the well of Juturna, under the Palatine Hill; the
+altar erected on the site of Cæsar’s funeral pile, the base of which
+spread itself at their feet, opposite the Rostra; the archaic stele and
+the legendary tomb of Romulus over which lies the black marble slab of
+the Comitium; and again, the Lacus Curtius.
+
+The sun, which had set behind the Capitol, was striking with its
+last shafts the triumphal arch of Titus on the towering Velia. The
+heavens, where to the West the pearl-white moon floated, remained as
+blue as at midday. An even, peaceful, and clear shadow spread itself
+over the silent Forum. The bronzed navvies were delving this field of
+stones, while, pursuing the work of the ancient Kings, their comrades
+turned the crank of a well, for the purpose of drawing the water which
+still forms the bed where slumbered, in the days of pious Numa, the
+reed-fringed Velabrum.
+
+They were performing their task methodically and with vigilance.
+Hippolyte Dufresne, who had for several months been a witness of their
+assiduous labour, of their intelligence and of their prompt obedience
+to orders, inquired of the director of the excavations how it was that
+he obtained such yeoman’s work from his labourers.
+
+“By leading their life,” replied Giacomo Boni. “Together with them do I
+turn over the soil; I impart to them what we are together seeking for,
+and I impress on their minds the beauty of our common work. They feel
+an interest in an enterprise the grandeur of which they apprehend but
+vaguely. I have seen their faces pale with enthusiasm when unearthing
+the tomb of Romulus. I am their everyday comrade, and if one of them
+falls ill, I take a seat at his bedside. I place as great faith in them
+as they do in me. And so it is that I boast of faithful workmen.”
+
+“Boni, my dear Boni,” exclaimed Joséphin Leclerc, “you know full well
+that I admire your labours, and that your grand discoveries fill me
+with emotion, and yet, allow me to say so, I regret the days when
+flocks grazed over the entombed Forum. A white ox, from whose massive
+head branched horns widely apart, chewed the cud in the unploughed
+field; a hind dozed at the foot of a tall column which sprang from the
+sward, and one mused: Here was debated the fate of the world. The Forum
+has been lost to poets and lovers from the day that it ceased to be the
+Campo Formio.”
+
+Jean Boilly dwelt on the value of these excavations, so methodically
+carried out, as a contribution towards a knowledge of the past. Then,
+the conversation having drifted towards the philosophy of the history
+of Rome:
+
+“The Latins,” he remarked, “displayed reason even in the matter of
+their religion. Their gods were commonplace and vulgar, but full of
+common sense and occasionally generous. If a comparison be drawn
+between this Roman Pantheon composed of soldiers, magistrates, virgins,
+and matrons and the deviltries painted on the walls of Etruscan tombs,
+reason and madness will be found in juxtaposition. The infernal scenes
+depicted in the mortuary chambers of Corneto represent the monstrous
+creations of ignorance and fear. They seem to us as grotesque as
+Orcagna’s _Day of Judgment_ in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and the
+_Dantesque Hell_ of the Campo Santo of Pisa, whereas the Latin Pantheon
+reflects for ever the image of a well-organised society. The gods of
+the Romans were like themselves, industrious and good citizens. They
+were useful deities, each one having its proper function. The very
+nymphs held civil and political offices.
+
+“Look at Juturna, whose altar at the foot of the Palatine we have so
+frequently contemplated. She did not seem fated by her birth, her
+adventures, and her misfortunes to occupy a permanent post in the
+city of Romulus. An incensed Rutula, beloved by Jupiter, who rewarded
+her with immortality, when King Turnus fell by the hand of Æneas, as
+decreed by the Fates, she flung herself into the Tiber, to escape thus
+from the light of day, since it was denied her to perish with her royal
+brother. Long did the shepherds of Latium tell the story of the living
+nymph’s lamentations from the depths of the river. In later years, the
+villagers of rural Rome, when looking down at night-time over the bank,
+imagined that they could see her by the moon’s rays, lurking in her
+glaucous garments among the rushes. The Romans, however, did not leave
+her to the idle contemplation of her sorrows. They promptly conceived
+the idea of allotting to her an important duty, and entrusted her
+with the custody of their fountains, converting her into a municipal
+goddess. And so it is with all their divinities. The Dioscuri, whose
+temple lives in its beautiful ruins, the Dioscuri, the brothers of
+Helen, the sparkling _Gemini_, were put to good use by the Romans, as
+messengers of the State. The Dioscuri it was, who, mounted on a white
+charger, brought to Rome the news of the victory of Lake Regillus.
+
+“The Italians asked of their gods only temporal and substantial
+benefits. In this respect, notwithstanding the Asiatic fears which have
+invaded Europe, their religious sentiment has not changed. That which
+they formally demanded from their gods and their genii, they nowadays
+expect from the Madonna and the Saints. Every parish possesses its
+Beatified patron, to whom requests are preferred just as in the case of
+a Deputy. There are Saints for the vine, for cereals, for cattle, for
+the colic, and for toothache. Latin imagination has repeopled Heaven
+with a multitude of living bodies, and has converted Judaic monotheism
+into a new polytheism. It has enlivened the Gospels with a copious
+mythology; it has re-established a familiar intercourse between the
+divine and the terrestrial worlds. The peasantry demand miracles of
+their protecting Saints, and hurl invectives at them if the miracle is
+slow of manifestation. The peasant who has in vain solicited a favour
+of the Bambino, returns to the chapel, and addressing on this occasion
+the Incoronata herself, exclaims:
+
+“‘I am not speaking to you, you whoreson, but to your sainted mother.’
+
+“The women make the Madre di Dio a confidant of their love affairs.
+They believe with some show of reason that being a woman she
+understands, and that there is no need to be on a footing of delicacy
+with her. They have no fear of going too far--a proof of their piety.
+Hence we must view with admiration the prayer which a fine lass of
+the Genoese Riviera addressed to the Madonna: ‘Holy Mother of God,
+who didst conceive without sin, grant me the grace of sinning without
+conceiving.’”
+
+Nicole Langelier here remarked that the religion of the Romans lent
+itself to the evolution of Rome’s policy.
+
+“Bearing the stamp of a distinctly national character,” he said, “it
+was, for all that, capable of penetrating the minds of foreign nations,
+and of winning them over by its sociable and tolerant spirit. It was an
+administrative religion propagating itself without effort together with
+the rest of the administration.”
+
+“The Romans loved war,” said M. Goubin, who studiously avoided
+paradoxes.
+
+“They loved not war for itself,” was Jean Boilly’s rejoinder. “They
+were far too reasonable for that. That military service was to them a
+hardship is revealed by certain signs. Monsieur Michel Bréal tells you
+that the word which primarily expressed the equipment of the soldier,
+_ærumna_, subsequently assumed the general meaning of lassitude, need,
+trouble, hardship, toil, pain, and distress. Those peasants were just
+as other peasants. They entered the ranks merely because compelled and
+forced thereto. Their very leaders, the wealthy proprietors, waged war
+neither for pleasure nor for glory. Previous to entering on a campaign,
+they consulted their interests twenty times over, and carefully
+computed the chances.”
+
+“True,” said M. Goubin, “but their circumstances and the state of the
+world compelled them ever to be in arms. Thus it is that they carried
+civilisation to the far ends of the known world. War is above all an
+instrument of progress.”
+
+“The Latins,” resumed Jean Boilly, “were agriculturists who waged
+agriculturists’ wars. Their ambitions were ever agricultural. They
+exacted of the vanquished, not money, but soil, the whole or part of
+the territory of the subjugated confederation, generally speaking
+one-third, out of friendship, as they said, and because they were
+moderate in their desires. The farmer came and drove his plough over
+the spot where the legionary had a short while ago planted his pike.
+The tiller of the soil confirmed the soldier’s conquests. Admirable
+soldiers, doubtless, well disciplined, patient, and brave, who fought
+and who were sometimes beaten just like any others; yet still more
+admirable peasants. If wonder is felt at their having conquered so many
+lands, still more is it to be wondered at that they should have kept
+them. The marvel of it is that in spite of the many battles they lost,
+these stubborn peasants never yielded an acre of soil, so to speak.”
+
+While this discussion was proceeding, Giacomo Boni was gazing with a
+hostile eye at the tall brick house standing to the north of the Forum
+on top of several layers of ancient substructures.
+
+“We are about,” he said, “to explore the Curia Julia. We shall soon, I
+hope, be in a position to break up the sordid building which covers its
+remains. It will not cost the State much to purchase it for the spade’s
+work. Buried under nine mètres of soil on which stands the Convent of
+S. Adriano lie the flagstones of Diocletian, who restored the Curia
+for the last time. We shall surely find among the rubbish a number
+of the marble tables on which the laws were engraved. It is a matter
+of interest to Rome, to Italy, nay to the whole world, that the last
+vestiges of the Roman Senate should see the light of day.”
+
+Thereupon he invited his friends into his hut, as hospitable and rustic
+a one as that of Evander.
+
+It constituted a single room wherein stood a deal table laden with
+black potteries and shapeless fragments giving out an earthy smell.
+
+“Prehistorical treasures!” sighed Joséphin Leclerc. “And so, my good
+Giacomo Boni, not content with seeking in the Forum the monuments of
+the Emperors, those of the Republic, and those of the Kings, you must
+fain sink down into the soil which bore flora and fauna that have
+vanished, drive your spade into the quaternary, and the tertiary,
+penetrate the pliocene, the miocene, and the eocene; from Latin
+archæology you wander to prehistoric archæology and to palæontology.
+The salons are expressing alarm at the depths to which you are
+venturing. Countess Pasolini would like to know where you intend to
+stop, and you are represented in a little satirical sheet as coming out
+at the Antipodes, breathing the words: _Adesso va bene!_”
+
+Boni seemed not to have heard.
+
+He was examining with deep attention a clay vessel still damp and
+covered with ooze. His pale blue expressive eyes darkened while
+critically examining this humble work of man for some unrevealed
+trace of a mysterious past, but resumed their natural hue as the
+Commendatore’s mind wandered off into a reverie.
+
+“These remains which you have before you,” he presently remarked,
+“these roughly hewn little wooden sarcophagi and these cinerary urns of
+black pottery and of house-like shape containing calcined bones were
+gathered under the Temple of Faustina, on the north-west side of the
+Forum.
+
+“Black urns containing ashes, and skeletons resting in their coffins
+as if in a bed, are here to be met with side by side. The funeral
+rites of the Greeks and the Romans included both those of burial and
+of cremation. Over the whole of Europe, in prehistoric days, the two
+customs were simultaneously observed, in the same city and in the same
+tribe. Does this dual fashion of sepulture correspond with the ideals
+of two races? I am inclined to believe so.”
+
+Picking up, with reverential and almost ritual gesture, an urn shaped
+like a dwelling and containing a small quantity of ashes, he went on:
+
+“The men who in immemorial times gave this form to clay, believed that
+the soul, being attached to the bones and the ashes, had need of a
+dwelling, but that it did not require a very large house wherein to
+live the abridged life of the dead. These men were of a noble race
+which came from Asia. The one whose light ashes I now hold lived before
+the days of Evander and of the shepherd Faustulus.”
+
+Then, making use of the phraseology of the ancients, he added:
+
+“Those were the days when King Vitulus, King Calf as we should say,
+held peaceful sway over this country so pregnant with glory. Monotonous
+pastoral times reigned over the Ausonian plain. These men were,
+however, neither ignorant nor boorish. Much priceless knowledge had
+come to them from their forefathers. Both the ship and the oar were
+known to them. They practised the art of subjecting oxen to the yoke
+and of harnessing them to the pole. They kindled at will the divine
+flame. They gathered salt, wrought in gold, kneaded and baked vases
+of clay. Probably too they began to till the soil. They do say that
+the Latin shepherds became agricultural labourers in the fabled days
+of the Calf. They cultivated millet, wheat, and spelt. They stitched
+skins together with needles of bone. They wove and perchance made wool
+false to its whiteness by dyeing it various colours. By the phases of
+the moon did they measure time. They gazed upon the heavens but to
+discover in them what was in the world below. They saw in them the
+greyhound who watches for Diospiter the shepherd who tends the starry
+flock. The prolific clouds were to them the Sun’s cattle, the cows
+supplying milk to the cerulean countryside. They worshipped the heavens
+as their Father, and the Earth as their Mother. At eventide, they heard
+the chariots of the gods, like themselves migratory, roll along the
+mountain roads with their ponderous wheels. They enjoyed the light of
+day and pondered with sadness over the life of the souls in the Kingdom
+of Shadows.
+
+“We know that these massive-headed Aryans were fair, since their gods,
+made to their own image, were fair. Indra had locks like ears of wheat
+and a beard as tawny as the tiger’s coat. The Greeks conceived the
+immortal gods with blue or glaucous eyes, and a head of golden hair.
+The goddess Roma was _flava et candida_:
+
+“Were it possible to make a whole out of these calcined bony fragments,
+the result would be pure Aryan forms. In those massive and vigorous
+skulls, in those heads as square as the primary Rome which their sons
+were to build, you would recognise the ancestors of the patricians of
+the Commonwealth, the long flourishing stock which produced tribunes
+of the people, pontiffs, and consuls; you would be handling the
+magnificent mould of the robust brains which constructed religion, the
+family, the army, and the public laws of the most strongly organised
+city that ever existed.”
+
+Gently placing the bit of pottery on the rustic table, Giacomo Boni
+bends over a coffin the size of a cradle, a coffin dug out of the trunk
+of an oak, and similar in shape to the early canoes of man. He lifts up
+the thin covering of bark and sap-wood forming the lid of that funeral
+wherry, and brings to light bones as frail as a bird’s skeleton. Of
+the body, there hardly remains the spinal column, and it would bear
+resemblance to one of the lowest of vertebrata, such as a big saurian,
+did not the fullness of the forehead reveal man. Coloured beads, which
+have become detached from a necklace, are scattered over these bones
+browned with age, washed by subterraneous waters, and exhumed from
+clayey soil.
+
+“Look!” says Boni, “at this little boy who was not given the honours of
+cremation, but buried, and returned as a whole to the earth whence he
+sprung. He is not a son of headmen, nor a noble inheritor of the traits
+of a fair race. He belongs to the race indigenous to the Mediterranean,
+the race which became the Roman _plebs_, and which supplies Italy to
+the present day with subtile lawyers and calculating individuals. He
+was born in the Palatine City of the Seven Hills, in days seen dimly
+through the mist of heroic fables. It is a Romulean boy. In those
+days, the Valley of the Seven Hills was a morass, and the slopes of
+the Palatine were covered with reed-thatched huts only. A tiny lance
+was placed on the coffin to show that the child was a male. He was
+barely four years old when he fell asleep in death. Then his mother
+clothed him with a beautiful tunic clasped at the neck, around which
+she fastened a string of beads. The kinsmen did not begrudge him their
+offerings. They deposited on his tomb, in urns of black earthenware,
+milk, beans, and a bunch of grapes. I have collected these vessels and
+I have fashioned similar ones out of the same clay by the heat of a
+wood fire lit in the Forum at night. Previous to taking a last farewell
+of him, they ate and drank together a portion of their offerings; this
+funeral repast assuaged their sorrow. Child, thou who sleepest since
+the days of the god Quirinus, an Empire has passed over thy agrestic
+coffin, and the same stars which shone at thy birth are about to light
+up the skies above us. The unfathomable space which separates the hours
+of your life from those of our own constitutes but an imperceptible
+moment in the life of the Universe.”
+
+After a moment’s silence, Nicole Langelier remarked:
+
+“It is as difficult to distinguish amid a people the races composing it
+as to trace in the course of a river the streams which mingle with it.
+What constitutes, moreover, a race? Do any human races really exist?
+I see white men, red men, and black men. But, they do not constitute
+races; they are merely varieties of the same race, of the same species,
+which form together fruitful unions and intermingle without ceasing.
+_A fortiori_, the man of learning knows not several yellow races or
+several white races. Human beings invent, however, races in pursuance
+of their vanity, their hatred, or their greed. In 1871, France became
+dismembered by virtue of the rights of the Germanic race, and yet no
+German race has an existence. The antiemites kindle the hatred of
+Christian peoples against the Jews, and still there is no Jewish race.
+
+“What I state on the subject, Boni, is purely speculative, and not with
+the view of running counter to your ideas. How could one not believe
+you! Conviction has its home on your lips. Moreover, you blend in your
+thoughts the profound verities of poetry with the far-spreading truths
+of science. As you truly state, the shepherds who came from Bactriana
+peopled Greece and Italy. As you again say, they found there natives
+of the soil. In ancient days, a belief shared in common by Italians
+and Hellenes was that the first men who peopled their country were
+like Erectheus, born of Mother Earth. Nor do I pretend, my dear Boni,
+that you cannot trace through the centuries the antochthones of your
+Ausonia, and the immigrants from the Pamir; the former, intelligent
+and eloquent plebeians; the latter, patricians fully impregnated with
+courage and faith. For, when all is said, if there are not, properly
+speaking, several human races, and if still less so several white
+races, our species assuredly comprises distinct varieties oftentimes
+stamped with marked characteristics. Hence there is nothing to hinder
+two or more of these varieties living for a long time side by side
+without fusing, each one preserving its individual characteristics.
+Nay, these differences may occasionally, in lieu of vanishing with the
+course of time under the action of the plastic forces of nature, on
+the contrary become accentuated more strongly through the empire of
+immutable customs, and the stress of social institutions.”
+
+“_E proprio vero_,” said Boni in a low tone, as he replaced the oaken
+lid on the coffin of the Romulean child.
+
+Then, begging his guests to be seated, he said to Nicole Langelier:
+
+“I shall now hold you to your promise, and beg you to read to us that
+story of Gallio, at which I have seen you at work in your little room
+in the _Foro Traiano_. You make Romans speak in your script. This is
+the spot to hear your narrative, here in a corner of the Forum, close
+by the Via Sacra, between the Capitol and the Palatine. Tarry not with
+your reading, so as not to be overtaken by the twilight, and lest your
+voice be quickly drowned by the cries of the birds warning one another
+of approaching night.”
+
+The guests of Giacomo Boni welcomed the foregoing utterance with a
+murmur of approval, and Nicole Langelier, without waiting for more
+pressing entreaties, unrolled a manuscript and read aloud the following
+narrative.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+GALLIO
+
+
+In the 804th year of the foundation of Rome, and the 13th of the
+principality of Claudius Cæsar, Junius Annæus Novatus was proconsul of
+Achaia. Born of a knightly family of Spanish origin, a son of Seneca
+the Rhetor and of the chaste Helvia, a brother of Annæus Mela, and of
+the famed Lucius Annæus, he bore the name of his adoptive father, the
+Rhetor Gallio, exiled by Tiberius. In his mother’s veins flowed the
+same blood as that of Cicero, and he had inherited from his father,
+together with immense wealth, a love of letters and of philosophy. He
+studied the works of the Greeks even more assiduously than those of the
+Latins. His mind was a prey to noble aspiration. He was an interested
+student of nature and of what appertains to her. The activity of his
+intelligence was so keen that he enjoyed being read to while in his
+bath, and that, even when joining in the chase, he was wont to carry
+with him his tablets of wax and his stylus. During the leisure moments
+which he managed to secure in the intervals of most serious duties and
+most important works, he wrote books on subjects relating to nature,
+and composed tragedies.
+
+His clients and his freedmen loudly proclaimed his gentleness. His was
+indeed a genial character. He had never been known to give way to a fit
+of anger. He looked upon violence as the worst and most unpardonable of
+weaknesses.
+
+All deeds of cruelty were held in execration by him, save when their
+true character escaped him owing to the consecration of custom and of
+public opinion. He frequently discovered, amid the severities rendered
+sacred by ancestral usage and sanctified by the laws, revolting
+excesses against which he raised his voice in protest, and which he
+would have attempted to sweep away, had not the interests of the State
+and the common welfare been objected from all quarters. In those days,
+conscientious magistrates and honest functionaries were not few and far
+between throughout the Empire. There were indeed a number as honest and
+as impartial as Gallio himself, but it is to be doubted whether another
+could be found so humane.
+
+Entrusted with the administration of that Greece despoiled of her
+riches, her pristine glory departed, and fallen from her freedom so
+full of life into an idle tranquillity, he remembered that she had
+formerly taught the world wisdom and the fine arts, and his treatment
+of her combined the vigilance of a guardian with the reverence of
+a son. He respected the liberties of the cities and the rights of
+individuals. He showed honour to those who were truly Greeks by birth
+and education, regretting that their numbers were sorely restricted,
+and that his authority extended for the greater part over an infamous
+rabble of Jews and Syrians; yet he remained equitable in dealing with
+these Asiatics, laying unction to his soul for what he considered a
+meritorious endeavour.
+
+He dwelt in Corinth, the richest and most densely populated city of
+Roman Greece. His villa, built in the time of Augustus, enlarged
+and embellished since then by the pro-consuls who had governed the
+province in succession, stood on the furthermost western slopes of the
+Acrocorinthus, whose foliaged summit was crowned by the Temple of Venus
+and the groves where dwelt her priests. It was a somewhat spacious
+mansion surrounded by gardens studded with bushy trees, watered by
+springs, ornamented with statues, alcoves, gymnasia, baths, libraries,
+and altars consecrated to the gods.
+
+He was strolling in it on a certain morn, according to his wont,
+with his brother Annæus Mela, discoursing on the order of nature and
+the vicissitudes of fortune. The sun was rising, hazy in its white
+splendour in the roseate heavens. The gentle undulations of the hills
+of the Isthmus concealed the Saronic shore, the Stadium, the sanctuary
+of the sports, and the eastern harbour of Cenchreæ. Between the fallow
+slopes of the Geranean range and the crimson twin-peaked Helicon, one
+could, however, obtain a glimpse of the quiescent blue waters of the
+Alcyonium Mare. In the distance, and to the north, glistened the three
+snow-capped summits of Parnassus. Gallio and Mela proceeded together
+as far as the edge of the elevated foreground. At their feet spread
+Corinth standing on an extensive plateau of pale yellow sand, and
+sloping gently towards the spumous fringe of the Gulf. The pavements of
+the forum, the columns of the basilica, the tiers of the hippodrome,
+the white steps of the porches sparkled, while the gilded roofs of the
+temples flashed dazzling rays. Vast and new, the town was intersected
+with straight-running streets. A wide road descended to the harbour of
+Lechæum, whose shore was fringed with warehouses and whose waters were
+covered with ships. To the west, the atmosphere reeked with the smoke
+of the iron-foundries, while the streams ran black from the pollution
+of the dye-houses, and on that side, forests of pine extending to the
+edge of the horizon, were lost to sight in the skies.
+
+Gradually, the town awoke from its slumbers. The strident neighing of a
+horse rent the morning calm, and soon were heard the muffled rumblings
+of wheels, shouting of waggoners, and the chanting voices of women
+selling herbs. Emerging from their hovels amid the ruins of the Palace
+of Sisyphus, aged and blind hags bearing copper vessels on their heads,
+and led by children, wended their way to draw water from the Pirene
+fountain. On the flat roofs of the houses abutting the grounds of the
+proconsul, Corinthian women were spreading linen to dry, and one of
+them was castigating her child with leek-stalks. In the hollow road
+leading to the Acropolis, a semi-nude old bronze-coloured man, prodded
+the rump of an ass laden with salad herbs and chanted between the
+stumps of his teeth and in his unkempt beard, a slave-song:
+
+     “Toil, little ass,
+      As I have toiled.
+    Much good will it do you:
+    You may be sure of it.”
+
+Meanwhile, at the sight of the town resuming its daily labour, Gallio
+fell a-musing over the earlier Corinth, the lovely Ionian city, opulent
+and joyous until the day when she witnessed the massacre of her
+citizens by the soldiery of Mummius, her women, the noble daughters of
+Sisyphus, sold at auction, her palaces and temples the prey of flames,
+her walls razed to the ground, and her riches piled away into the
+Liburnian ships of the Consul.
+
+“Hardly a century ago,” he remarked, “the work wrought by Mummius still
+stood revealed in all its horror. The shore which you see, brother
+mine, was more of a desert than the Libyan sands. The divine Julius
+rebuilt the town wrecked by our arms, and peopled it with freedmen. On
+this very strand, where the illustrious Bacchiadæ formerly revelled
+in their haughty indolence, poor and rude Latins settled, and Corinth
+entered upon a new lease of life. She grew rapidly, and realised how to
+take advantage of her position. She levies tribute on all ships which,
+whether from the East or from the West, cast anchor in her two harbours
+of Lechæum and Cenchreæ. Her population and wealth increase apace under
+the ægis of the Roman peace.
+
+“What blessings has not the Empire bestowed throughout the world! To
+the Empire is due the profound tranquillity which the countryside
+enjoys. The seas are swept of pirates, and the highways of robbers.
+From the befogged Ocean to the Permulic Gulf, from Gades to the
+Euphrates, the trading of merchandise proceeds in undisturbed security.
+The law protects the lives and property of all. Individual rights must
+not be infringed upon. Liberty has henceforth no other limits than its
+lines of defence, and is circumscribed for its own security alone.
+Justice and reason rule the world.”
+
+Unlike his two brothers, Annæus Mela had not intrigued for honours.
+Those who loved him, and their name was legion, for he was ever in his
+intercourse affable and extremely pleasant, attributed his detachment
+from public affairs to the moderation of a mind attracted by the
+blessings of tranquil obscurity, a mind which had no other care than
+the study of philosophy. But those who observed him with greater
+insight were under the impression that he was ambitious after his own
+fashion, and that like Mæcenas, he, a simple knight, was consumed with
+the envy of enjoying the same consideration as the consuls. Lastly,
+certain evil-minded individuals believed that they discerned in him the
+greed of the Senecas for the riches which they affected to despise, and
+thus did they explain to themselves that Mela had for a long time lived
+in obscurity in Betica, giving himself up entirely to the management of
+his vast estates, and that subsequently summoned to Rome by his brother
+the philosopher, he had devoted himself to the administration of the
+finances of the Empire, rather than go in the quest of high judiciary
+or military posts. His character could not be readily determined from
+his utterances, for he spoke the language of the Stoics, a language
+equally adapted for the concealment of the weaknesses of the mind and
+the revelation of the grandeur of one’s sentiments. It was in those
+days the height of elegance to utter virtuous discourse. At any rate,
+there is no doubt that Mela spoke his thoughts.
+
+He replied to his brother that, although not versed in public affairs
+like himself, he had had occasion to admire the power and wisdom of the
+Romans.
+
+“They reveal themselves,” he said, “in the most remote parts of our own
+Spain. But it is in a wild pass of the mountains of Thessaly that I
+have been made to appreciate at its highest the beneficent majesty of
+the Empire. I had come from Hypata, a town renowned for its cheeses,
+and whose women were notorious for witchcraft, and I had been riding
+for some hours along mountain paths, without coming across a human
+face. Overcome by the heat and fatigue, I tethered my horse to a tree
+by the road, and lay down under an arbutus-bush. I had been resting
+there a short while only, when there came along a lean old man bowed
+down under a load of branches. Utterly exhausted, he tottered in his
+steps, and just as he was about to fall, exclaimed: ‘Cæsar.’ On hearing
+such an invocation escape the lips of a poor woodcutter in this stony
+solitude, my heart overflowed with veneration for the tutelary City,
+which inspires, even unto the farthermost lands, the most rustic of
+minds with so great a conception of its sovereign providence. But
+sadness and a feeling of distress mingled with my admiration, brother
+mine, when I reflected upon the injury and insults to which the
+inheritance of Augustus and the fortune of Rome were exposed through
+men’s folly and the vices of the century.”
+
+“I have witnessed on the spot, brother mine,” replied Gallio, “the
+crimes and follies which sadden your mind. My cheek has blanched under
+the gaze of the victims of Caius from my seat in the Senate. I have
+held my peace, as I did not despair of better days. I am of the opinion
+that good citizens should serve the Republic under bad princes rather
+than shirk their duty in a useless death.”
+
+As Gallio was uttering these sentiments, two men, still in their youth
+and wearing the toga, came up to him. The one was Lucius Cassius, of a
+Roman family, plebeian but ancient, and having attained distinction.
+The other, Marcus Lollius, son and grandson of consuls, and moreover of
+a knightly family, which had sprung from the free town of Terracina.
+Both had frequented the schools of Athens, and acquired a knowledge of
+the laws of nature of which those Romans who had not been in Greece
+were totally ignorant.
+
+At the present moment, they were studying in Corinth the management
+of public affairs, and the proconsul surrounded himself with them as
+an ornamental adjunct to his magistracy. Somewhat behind them, the
+Greek Apollodorus, wearing the short cape of the philosophers, bald of
+head, and with Socratic beard, sauntered along, with uplifted arm and
+gesticulating fingers, discussing with himself.
+
+Gallio welcomed all three of them in kindly fashion.
+
+“The rose of dawn is already fading,” he said, “and the sun is
+beginning to shed its steeled darts. Come along, my good friends, to
+the coolness of the shady foliage beyond.”
+
+Saying this, he led them along the banks of a stream whose babbling
+murmur invited peaceful reflections, until they had reached an
+enclosure of verdant bushes in the midst of which lay in a hollow an
+alabaster basin filled with limpid waters on whose surface floated
+the feather of a dove, which had just bathed in them, and which was
+now cooing plaintively from a branch. They took their seats on a
+semicircular marble bench supported by griffins. Laurel and myrtle
+bushes blended their shadows about it. Statues encircled the enclosure.
+A wounded Amazon gracefully coiled her arm about her head. Grief
+appeared a thing of beauty on her lovely face. A shaggy Satyr was
+playing with a goat. A Venus, emerging from the bath, was drying her
+wetted limbs along which a shudder of pleasurable emotion seemed to
+run. Near by, a youthful Faun was smilingly placing a flute to his
+lips. His face was partly concealed by the branches, but his shining
+belly glistened amid the leafage.
+
+“That Faun seems animated,” remarked Marcus Lollius. “One could imagine
+that a gentle breathing was causing his bosom to heave.”
+
+“He is true to life, Marcus,” said Gallio. “One expects to hear rustic
+melodies flow from his flute. A Greek slave carved him out of the
+marble, in imitation of an ancient model. The Greeks formerly excelled
+in the making of these fanciful statues. Several of their efforts in
+this style are justly renowned. There is no gainsaying it: they have
+found the means of giving august traits to the gods and of expressing
+in both marble and bronze the majesty of the masters of the world. Who
+but admires the Olympian Zeus? And yet, who would care to be Phidias!”
+
+“No Roman would assuredly care to be Phidias,” exclaimed Lollius,
+who was spending the fortune he had inherited from his ancestry in
+ornamenting his villa at Pausilypum with the masterpieces of Phidias
+and Myron brought over from Greece and Asia.
+
+Lucius Cassius was of the same opinion. He argued with some warmth that
+the hands of a free man were not made to wield the sculptor’s chisel
+or the painter’s brush, and that no Roman citizen would condescend to
+the degrading work of casting bronze, hewing marble into shape, and
+painting forms on a wall.
+
+He professed admiration for the manners of the ancient times, and
+vaunted at every opportunity the ancestral virtues.
+
+“Men of the stamp of Curius and Fabricius cultivated their
+lettuce-beds, and slept under thatched roofs,” he said. “They wot of no
+other statue than the Priapus carved in the heart of a box-tree, who,
+protruding his vigorous pale in the centre of their garden, threatened
+pilferers with a terrible and shameful punishment.”
+
+Mela, who was well versed in the annals of Rome, opposed to this
+opinion the example of an old patrician.
+
+“In the days of the Republic,” he pointed out, “that illustrious man,
+Caius Fabius, of a family issued from Hercules and Evander, limned with
+his own hand on the walls of the Temple of Salus paintings so highly
+prized that their recent loss, on the destruction of the temple by
+fire, has been considered a public misfortune. It is moreover related
+that he did not doff his toga when painting, thus to indicate that such
+work was not unworthy of a Roman citizen. He was given the surname of
+Pictor, which his descendants were proud to bear.”
+
+Lucius Cassius replied with vivacity:
+
+“When painting victories in a temple, Caius Fabius had in mind those
+victories, and not the painting of them. No painters existed in Rome
+in those days. Anxious that the doughty deeds of his ancestors should
+for ever be present to the gaze of the Romans, he set an example to the
+artisans. But just as a pontiff or an ædile lays the first stone of
+an edifice, without exercising for that the trade of a mason or of an
+architect, Caius Fabius executed the first painting Rome boasted of,
+without it being permissible to number him with the workmen who earn
+their livelihood by painting on walls.”
+
+Apollodorus signified approval of this speech with a nod, and, stroking
+his philosophic beard, remarked:
+
+“The sons of Ascanius are born to rule the world. Any other care would
+be unworthy of them.”
+
+Then, speaking at some length and in well-rounded sentences, he sang
+the praises of the Romans. He flattered them because he feared them.
+But in his innermost being, he felt nothing but contempt for their
+shallow intelligences so devoid of finesse. He beslavered Gallio with
+praise in these words:
+
+“Thou hast ornamented this city with magnificent monuments. Thou hast
+assured the liberty of its Senate and of its people. Thou hast decreed
+excellent regulations for trade and navigation, and thou dispensest
+justice with even tempered equity. Thy statue shall stand in the Forum.
+The title shall be granted to you of the second founder of Corinth, or
+rather Corinth shall take from you the name of Annæa. All these things
+are worthy of a Roman, and worthy of Gallio. But, do not think that the
+Greeks have an exaggerated affection for the manual arts. If many of
+them are engaged in painting vases, in dyeing stuffs, and in modelling
+figures, it is through necessity. Ulysses constructed his bed and his
+ship with his own hands. At the same time, the Greeks proclaim that it
+is unworthy of a wise man to give himself up to futile and gross arts.
+In his youth, Socrates followed the trade of a sculptor, and modelled
+an image of the Charites still to be seen on the Acropolis of Athens.
+His skill was certainly not of a mediocre order, and, had he so wished,
+he could, like the most renowned artists, have portrayed an athlete
+throwing a discus or bandaging his head. But he abandoned like works
+to devote himself to the quest of wisdom, as commanded by the oracle.
+Henceforth, he attached himself to young men, not for the purpose of
+measuring the proportions of their bodies but solely to teach them that
+which is honest. He preferred those whose soul was beautiful to those
+of perfect form, differing in this respect from sculptors, painters and
+debauchees, who consider only external beauty, despising the inner
+comeliness. You are aware that Phidias engraved on the great toe of his
+Jupiter the name of an athlete, because he was handsome, and without
+considering whether he was pure.”
+
+“Hence it is,” was Gallio’s summing up, “that we do not sing the
+praises of sculptors, while bestowing them on their works.”
+
+“By Hercules!” exclaimed Lollius, “I do not know whether to admire most
+that Venus or that Faun. The goddess seems to reflect coolness from
+the water still dripping from her. She is truly the desire of gods and
+men; do you not fear, Gallio, that some night, a lout concealed in your
+grounds may subject her to an outrage similar to the one inflicted by a
+profane youth, so it is reported, on the Aphrodite of the Cnidians? The
+priestesses of her temple discovered one morning traces of the outrage
+on the body of the goddess, and travellers affirm that from that day
+until now she bears the indelible mark of her defilement. The audacity
+of the man and the patience of the Immortal One are to be wondered at.”
+
+“The crime did not remain unpunished,” affirmed Gallio. “The
+sacrilegious profaner flung himself into the sea, and fell on the rocks
+a shapeless mass. He was never again seen.”
+
+“There can be no doubt,” resumed Lollius, “that the Venus of Cnidus
+surpasses all others in beauty. But the artisan who carved the one in
+your grounds, Gallio, knew how to make marble plastic. Look at that
+Faun; he is laughing, and saliva moistens his teeth and his lips; his
+cheeks have the fresh bloom of the apple: his whole body glistens with
+youth. However, I prefer the Venus to the Faun.”
+
+Raising his right arm, Apollodorus said:
+
+“Most gentle Lollius, just think a bit, and you will fain admit that
+a like preference is pardonable in an ignorant individual who follows
+his instincts and who reasons not, but that it is not permitted to one
+as wise as yourself. That Venus cannot be as beautiful as that Faun,
+for the body of woman enjoys a perfection lesser than that of man, and
+the copy of a thing which is less perfect can never equal in beauty the
+copy of a thing that is more perfect. No doubt can assuredly exist,
+Lollius, that the body of woman is less beautiful than that of man,
+since it contains a less beautiful soul. Women are vain, quarrelsome,
+their mind occupied with trifles and incapable of elevated thoughts,
+while sickness oftentimes obscures their intellect.”
+
+“And yet,” remarked Gallio, “both in Rome and in Athens, virgins and
+matrons have been held worthy of presiding over sacred rites and of
+placing offerings on the altars. Nay more, the gods have at times
+selected virgins to give utterance to their oracular words, or to
+reveal the future to men. Cassandra wore the bands of Apollo about her
+head and prophesied the discomfiture of the Trojans. Juturna, to whom
+the love of a god gave immortality, was entrusted with the guardianship
+of the fountains of Rome.”
+
+“Quite true,” replied Apollodorus. “But the gods sell dearly to virgins
+the privilege of interpreting their wishes, and of announcing future
+events. While conferring on them the power of seeing that which is
+hidden, they deprive them of their reason and inflict madness on them.
+I will, however, Gallio, grant you that some women are better than some
+men and that some men are less good than some women. This arises from
+the fact that the two sexes are not as distinct and separate from each
+other as one would believe, and that, quite on the contrary, there
+is something of man in many women, and of woman in many a man. The
+following is the explanation of this commingling:
+
+“The ancestors of the men who nowadays people the earth sprang from
+the hands of Prometheus, who, to give them shape, kneaded the clay
+as does the potter. He did not confine himself to shaping with his
+hands a single couple. Far too prudent and too industrious to cause
+the entire human race to grow from one seed and from a single vessel,
+he undertook the manufacture of a multitude of women and men, in
+order to secure at once to humanity the advantage of numbers. In order
+better to carry out so difficult a work, he modelled separately at the
+outset all the parts which were to constitute both male and female
+bodies. He fashioned as many lungs, livers, hearts, brains, bladders,
+spleens, intestines, matrices and generative organs as were required,
+and, lastly, he made with subtle art, and in sufficient quantity,
+all the organs by means of which human beings might breathe freely,
+feed themselves, and enjoy the reproduction of the species. He forgot
+neither muscles, tendons, bones, blood nor fluids. He next cut out
+skins, intending to place in each one, as in a sack, the requisite
+articles. All these component parts of men and women were duly
+finished, and nothing remained but to put them together, when he was of
+a sudden invited to partake of supper at the residence of Bacchus. He
+went thither, crowned with roses, and indulged too freely in libations
+to the god, returning with tottering steps to his workshop. His brain
+befogged with the fumes of wine, his eyesight dimmed, and his hands
+shaky, he resumed his task, greatly to our misfortune. The distribution
+of organs among human beings seemed to him an easy enough pastime. He
+knew not what he was about, and was perfectly contented with his job,
+however badly he accomplished it. He was constantly and inadvertently
+allotting to woman that which was proper to man, and to man the things
+pertaining to woman.
+
+“Thus it came about that our first parents were composed of
+ill-assorted pieces which did not harmonise. And, having mated
+by choice or at haphazard, they produced beings as incoherent as
+themselves. Thus has it come about, through the Titan’s fault, that we
+see so many virile women and so many effeminate men. This also explains
+the contradictory characteristics to be met with in the firmest of
+minds and how it is that the most determined character is perpetually
+false to itself. And, finally, this is why we are all at variance with
+our own selves.”
+
+Lucius Cassius expressed condemnation of this fable, because it did not
+teach man to conquer himself, but on the contrary induced him to yield
+to nature.
+
+Gallio pointed out that the poets and philosophers gave a different
+interpretation as to the origin of the world and the creation of
+mankind.
+
+“The fables told by the Greeks,” he said, “should not be believed
+in too blindly, nor should we hold as truthful, Apollodorus, what
+they state in particular concerning the stones thrown by Pyrrha. The
+philosophers are not in accord among themselves as to the principle
+presiding over the creation of the world, and leave us in doubt as to
+whether the earth was produced by water, by air, or, as seems more
+credible, by the subtile heat. But the Greeks wish to know all things,
+and so they forge ingenious falsehood. How much better it is to confess
+our ignorance. The past is as much concealed from us as is the future;
+we are circumscribed by two dense clouds, in the forgetfulness of
+what was, and in the uncertainty of what shall be. And yet we suffer
+ourselves to be the playthings of an inquisitive desire to become
+acquainted with the causes of things, and a consuming anxiety incites
+us to ponder over the destinies of mankind and of the world.”
+
+“It is true,” sighed Cassius, “that we are everlastingly striving to
+penetrate the impenetrable future. We toil at this quest with all our
+might, and call to our aid all kinds of means. Anon we think to attain
+our object by meditation; again, by prayer and ecstasy. Some of us
+consult the oracles of the gods; others, fearing not to do that which
+is forbidden, appeal to the augurs of Chaldæa, or try the Babylonian
+spells. Futile and sacrilegious curiosity! For, of what advantage would
+be to us the knowledge of future things, since they are inevitable!
+Nevertheless the wise men, still more so than the vulgar herd, feel
+the desire of delving into the future and of, so to speak, hurling
+themselves into it. It is doubtless because they hope thus to escape
+the present which inflicts on them so much that is sad and distasteful.
+Why should not the men of to-day be goaded with the desire of fleeing
+from these wretched times? We are living in an age replete with deeds
+of cowardice, abounding in ignominious acts, and fertile in crimes.”
+
+Cassius spoke at some length in depreciation of the times in which he
+lived. He lamented the fact that the Romans, fallen from their ancient
+virtues, no longer found any pleasure except in the consumption of the
+oysters of the Lucrine lake and of the birds of Phasis river, and that
+they had no taste except for mummers, chariot-drivers, and gladiators.
+He deplored the ills which the Empire was suffering from, the insolent
+luxury of the great, the contemptible avidity of the clients, and the
+savage depravity of the multitude.
+
+Gallio and his brother agreed with him. They loved virtue.
+Nevertheless, they had nothing in common with the patricians of old
+who, having no other care than the fattening of their swine, and the
+performance of the sacred rites, conquered the world for the better
+administration of their farms. This nobility of the byre, instituted
+by Romulus and Remus, was long since extinct. The patrician families
+created by the divine Julius and by the Emperor Augustus, had passed
+away. Intelligent men from all the provinces of the Empire had stepped
+into their places. Romans in Rome, they were nowhere strangers. They
+greatly surpassed the old Cethegus family by their refined minds
+and humane feelings. They did not regret the Republic; they did not
+regret liberty, the recollection of which recalled simultaneously
+proscriptions and civil wars. They honoured Cato as the heroic figure
+of another age, without wishing to see so exalted a type of virtue
+arise on top of fresh ruins. They looked upon the Augustan epoch and
+the first years of Tiberius as the happiest the world had ever known,
+since the Golden Age had existed in the imagination of the poets only.
+They lamented the fact that the new order of things, which had promised
+the world a long reign of felicity, should have so promptly burdened
+Rome with an unheard of shame unknown even to the contemporaries of
+Marius and Sulla. They had, during the madness of Caius, seen the best
+citizens branded with a hot iron, sentenced to the mines, to labour on
+the roads, thrown to wild beasts, fathers compelled to be present at
+the agony of their children, and men shining by their virtues, such as
+Cremutius Cordus, suffer themselves to die of starvation, in order to
+cheat the tyrant of their death. To Rome’s shame, be it said, Caligula
+respected neither his sisters nor the most illustrious dames. And, what
+filled these rhetors and philosophers with as great an indignation as
+the one they felt over the rape of the matrons and the assassination
+of the best citizens, were the crimes perpetrated by Caius against
+eloquence and letters. This madman had conceived the idea of destroying
+the poems of Homer, and had caused to be removed from all bookshelves
+the writings, the portraits, and the names of Virgil and of Livy.
+Finally, Gallio could not forgive him for having compared the style of
+Seneca to mortar without cement.
+
+They dreaded Claudius in a somewhat lesser degree, but despised him
+the more for all that. They ridiculed his pumpkin-like head and his
+seal-like voice. That old savant was not a monster of wickedness.
+The worst they could reproach him with was his weakness. But, in the
+exercise of the sovereign power, such weakness became at times as cruel
+as the cruelty of Caius. They also bore domestic grievances against
+him. If Caius had held Seneca up to ridicule, Claudius had banished him
+to Corsica. It is true that he had subsequently recalled him to Rome
+and conferred a prætorship on him. But they showed him no gratitude
+for having thus carried out the behests of Agrippina, in ignorance of
+what he was commanding. Indignant but long suffering, they left it
+to the Empress to determine the fate of the aged man, and the choice
+of the new prince. Many rumours were current to the shame of the
+unchaste and cruel daughter of Germanicus. They heeded them not, and
+sang the praises of the illustrious woman to whom the Senecas owed
+the termination of their misfortune and their rise in honours. As
+will oftentimes happen, their convictions were in harmony with their
+interests. A painful experience of public life had left unshaken their
+trust in the _régime_ established by the divine Augustus, a _régime_
+placed on a firmer basis by Tiberius, and under which they filled high
+positions. They were reckoning on a new master to redress the evils
+engendered by the masters of the Empire.
+
+Gallio produced from the folds of his toga a roll of papyrus.
+
+“Dear friends,” he said, “I have learnt this morning, through letters
+from Rome, that our young prince has married Octavia, the daughter of
+Cæsar.”
+
+A murmur of approval greeted the news.
+
+“We should indeed,” continued Gallio, “congratulate ourselves over
+a union, by virtue of which the prince, combining with his former
+qualifications those of husband and of son-in-law, becomes henceforth
+the equal of Britannicus. My brother Seneca never ceases praising in
+his letters to me the eloquence and gentleness of his pupil who sheds
+lustre on his youth by pleading before the Senate in the presence of
+the Emperor. He has not yet completed his sixteenth year, yet he has
+already won the cases of three unfortunate or guilty cities--Ilion,
+Bolonia, and Apamea.”
+
+“He has not then,” asked Lucius Cassius, “inherited the evil
+disposition of the Domitians, his ancestors?”
+
+“Indeed he has not,” replied Gallio. “It is Germanicus who lives anew
+in him.”
+
+Annæus Mela, who was not looked upon as a sycophant, joined in the
+praise of the son of Agrippina. His praises appeared affecting and
+sincere, since he pledged them, so to speak, on the head of his son,
+who was still of tender age.
+
+“Nero is chaste, modest, of a kindly disposition, and religious. My
+little Lucan, who is dearer to me than my eyes, was his play- and
+school-mate. Together they practised declamation in the Greek and Latin
+languages. Together they attempted to indite verse. Never did Nero, in
+the course of these contests of skill at versification, manifest the
+slightest symptom of jealousy. Quite the contrary, he enjoyed praising
+his rival’s verses, which, in spite of his tender age, revealed traces
+here and there of a consuming energy. He sometimes seemed happy to be
+surpassed by the nephew of his teacher. Such was the charming modesty
+of the prince of youth! Poets will some day compare the friendship of
+Nero and Lucan with that of Euryalus and Nisus.”
+
+“Nero,” the proconsul went on to say, “displays with the ardour of
+youth a gentle and merciful spirit. Time will but strengthen such
+virtues.
+
+“Claudius, when adopting him, has wisely acquiesced in the hope
+expressed by the Senate and the wish of the people. In so doing, he has
+removed from the Imperial succession a child overwhelmed by the shame
+of his mother, and has now, by giving Octavia to Nero, secured the
+accession of a youthful Cæsar whom Rome will delight in. The respectful
+son of an honoured mother, the zealous disciple of a philosopher, Nero,
+whose adolescence is illumined with the most agreeable qualities, Nero,
+our hope and the hope of the world, will remember, when clad in purple,
+the teachings of the Portico, and will rule the universe with justice
+and moderation.”
+
+“We welcome the omen,” remarked Lollius. “May an era of happiness dawn
+upon the human race!”
+
+“’Tis difficult to predict the future,” said Gallio. “Still, we
+experience no doubts regarding the eternity of the City. The oracles
+have promised Rome an empire without end, and it would be sacrilegious
+not to put our faith in the gods. Shall I reveal to you my fondest
+hope? I joyfully expect the time when peace will reign for ever on the
+earth, following upon the chastising of the Parthians. Yes indeed, we
+may, without fear of deceiving ourselves, herald the end of war so
+hated by mothers. Who is there to disturb the Roman peace henceforth?
+Our eagles have spread to the confines of the universe. All the nations
+have experienced our strength and our mercy. The Arab, the Sabæan,
+the dweller on the slopes of the Hæmus, the Sarmatian who quenches
+his thirst with the blood of his steed, the Sygambri of the curly
+locks, the woolly-headed Ethiopian, all come in hordes to worship Rome
+their protectress. Whence would new barbarians spring? Is it likely
+that the icy plains of the North or the burning sands of Libya hold
+in store enemies of the Roman nation? All Barbarians, won over to
+our friendship, will lay down their arms, and Rome, the white-haired
+great-grandmother, tranquil in her old age, will see the nations
+respectfully grouped about her as her adopted children, dwelling in
+harmony and love.”
+
+All signified their approval of the foregoing sentiments, excepting
+Cassius, who shook his head in disagreement.
+
+He felt a pride in his military ancestry while the glory of arms, so
+greatly extolled by poets and rhetors, kindled his enthusiasm.
+
+“I doubt, my friend Gallio,” he commented, “that nations will ever
+cease to hate and fear one another. To tell the truth, I should not
+desire such a consummation. Did war cease, what would become of
+strength of character, grandeur of soul, and love of country? Courage
+and devotion would be virtues out of date.”
+
+“Rest assured, Lucius,” said Gallio, “that when men shall cease to
+conquer one another, they will strive to subdue their own selves. That
+is the most virtuous attempt they can make, and the most noble use
+to which they can put their bravery and magnanimity. Yes indeed, the
+august mother whose wrinkles and whose hairs, blanched by centuries, we
+worship, Rome, will establish universal peace. Then shall the enjoyment
+of life be realised. Life under certain conditions is worth living.
+Life is a tiny flame between two infinite shadows; ’tis our share of
+the divine essence. During the term of his life, a man is similar to
+the gods.”
+
+While Gallio was thus discoursing, a dove perched itself on the
+shoulder of the Venus, whose marble contours gleamed among the myrtles.
+
+“My dear Gallio,” said Lollius with a smile, “the bird of Aphrodite
+takes delight in thy words. They are gentle and full of gracefulness.”
+
+A slave approached, bearing cool wine, and the friends of the proconsul
+discoursed of the gods. Apollodorus was of opinion that it was not easy
+to grasp their nature. Lollius doubted their very existence.
+
+“When thunder peals,” he said, “it all depends upon the philosopher
+whether it is the cloud or the god who has thundered.”
+
+Cassius, however, did not countenance such thoughtless arguments. He
+believed in the gods of the Republic. While entertaining doubts as to
+the extent of their providence, he asserted their existence, as he
+did not wish to differ from humanity on an essential point. And to
+support his belief in the faith of his ancestors, he had recourse to an
+argument he had learnt from the Greeks.
+
+“The gods exist,” he said. “Men have formed their idea of what they are
+like. Now, it is impossible to conceive an image not based on reality.
+How would it be possible to see Minerva, Neptune, and Mercury, were
+there neither Mercury, nor Neptune, nor Minerva?”
+
+“You have convinced me,” said Lollius mockingly. “The old woman who
+sells honey-cakes in the Forum, outside the basilica, has seen the
+god Typhon, he with the shaggy head of an ass, and a monster belly.
+He threw her on her back, threw her clothes over her ears, chastised
+her while keeping time to each resounding blow, and left her for dead,
+after polluting her in a disgusting fashion. She has herself told how,
+even as Antiope, she had been favoured with the visit of an immortal
+god. It is certain that the god Typhon exists, since he committed an
+outrage on an old cake-selling hag.”
+
+“In spite of thy mockery, Marcus, I do not doubt the existence of the
+gods,” resumed Cassius. “And I believe that they enjoy a human form,
+since it is under that form that they always show themselves to us,
+whether we slumber or whether we are awake.”
+
+“It would be better,” remarked Apollodorus, “to say that men possess
+the divine form, since the gods existed before them.”
+
+“My dear Apollodorus,” exclaimed Lollius. “You forget that Diana was
+first worshipped under the form of a tree, and that several important
+gods have the shape of an unhewn stone. Cybele is represented, not as a
+woman should be, with two breasts, but with several teats like a bitch
+or a sow. The sun is a god, but being too hot to assume the human form,
+he has taken the shape of a ball; he is a round god.”
+
+Annæus Mela gently censured this academic jesting.
+
+“All that is related about the gods,” he said, “should not be taken
+literally. The vulgar herd calls wheat Ceres, and wine Bacchus. But
+where is to be found the man crazy enough to believe that he drinks and
+eats a god? Let us indulge in a more exalted knowledge of the divine
+nature. The gods are but the several parts of nature, and they are all
+lost in one god, who is nature in its entirety.”
+
+The proconsul signified his approval of the words of his brother, and
+speaking in a serious strain, defined the attributes of divinity.
+
+“God is the soul of the world; this soul spreads to all parts of the
+universe, infusing motion and life into it. This soul, a creative
+flame, penetrating the inert mass of matter, gave shape to the world,
+governing and preserving it. Divinity, an active force, is essentially
+good. The matter which it has put to good use, being inert and passive,
+is bad in certain of its parts. God has been powerless to change its
+nature. This explains the origin of the evil in the world. Our souls
+are particles of the divine fire into which they will some day be
+merged. Consequently, God is within us and he dwells in particular in
+the virtuous man whose soul is not hampered with gross materialism.
+This wise man, in whom God dwells, is God’s equal. He should not
+implore him, but contain him within himself. And what madness it
+is to pray to God! What an act of impiety it is to petition him!
+It is tantamount to believing that it is possible to enlighten his
+intelligence, to change his heart, and to persuade him to mend his
+behaviour. It is displaying ignorance of the necessity governing his
+immutable wisdom. He is subjected to Destiny, or, to be more accurate,
+he is Destiny. His ways are laws to which he is like ourselves
+subjected. For once that he commands, he obeys for ever. Free and
+powerful in his submission, it is to himself that he shows obedience.
+All the happenings in the world are the manifestations of sovereign
+intentions originating with himself. His helplessness against himself
+is infinite.”
+
+Gallio’s speech was applauded by his hearers. Apollodorus, however,
+craved permission to submit a few objections.
+
+“You are right, Gallio,” he said, “when you believe that Jupiter is
+at the mercy of Anankè and I hold with you that Anankè is the first
+among the immortal goddesses. But it appears to me that your god,
+above all admirable in his compass and his perpetuity, had better
+intentions than luck when he created the world, since he found nothing
+better wherewith to knead it than a rebellious and ingrate substance,
+and that the material betrays the workman. I cannot but feel for him
+over his discomfiture. The potters of Athens are more fortunate. They
+procure, for the purpose of making vases, a delicate and plastic clay
+which readily takes and preserves the contours they give it. Hence do
+their goblets and amphoræ present an agreeable form. Their curves are
+graceful, and the painter limns with ease figures pleasing to the
+eye, such as old Silenus bestriding his ass, the toilet of Aphrodite,
+and the chaste Amazons. When I come to think of it, Gallio, I am of
+the opinion that if your god was less fortunate than the potters of
+Athens, ’tis for the reason that he lacked wisdom and that he was a
+poor artisan. The material at his disposal was not of the best. Still,
+it was not devoid of all serviceable properties, as you have yourself
+confessed. Nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad. A thing may be
+bad if put to a certain use, while it may be excellent in some other.
+It would be waste of time to plant olive-trees in the clay used in
+fashioning amphoræ. The tree of Pallas would not grow in the light and
+pure soil of which are made the beautiful vases which our victorious
+athletes receive, blushing the while with pride and modesty. It seems
+to me, Gallio, that your god, when fashioning the world with a material
+that was not suitable for the undertaking, was guilty of the mistake
+which a vine-dresser of Megara would be committing, were he to plant
+a vine in modelling clay, or were some worker in ceramics to select
+for the making of amphoræ the stony soil which affords nutriment to
+the clusters of the grape-vine. Your god, you say, made the universe.
+He ought certainly to have given form to some other thing, in order
+to make suitable use of his material. Since the substance, as you
+assert, proved rebellious to him, either through its inherent inertia,
+or through some other bad quality, should he have persisted in putting
+it to a use it could not respond to, and, as the saying goes, carve
+his bow out of a cypress? The secret of industry does not consist in
+accomplishing much, but in doing good work. Why did he not content
+himself with creating some small thing, say a gnat, or a drop of water,
+but finish it to perfection?
+
+“I might add further remarks about your god, Gallio, and ask you, for
+instance, if you do not entertain a fear that from his constant rubbing
+against matter, he may wear out, just as a millstone becomes worn in
+the long run in the course of grinding wheat. But such questions are
+not to be solved in a hurry, and the time of a proconsul is precious.
+Permit me at least to say to you that you are not justified in
+believing that your god rules and preserves the world, since, according
+to your own admission, he deprived himself of intelligence after having
+become acquainted with all things; of will-power, after having willed
+all things, and of power, following upon his ability to do what he
+saw fit. Herein again lay, on his part, a serious mistake, for he was
+thus an instrument in depriving himself of the means of correcting his
+imperfect work. So far as I am concerned, I am inclined to believe that
+god is in reality, not the one you have conceived, but indeed the
+matter he discovered on a certain day, and which the Greeks have styled
+chaos. You are mistaken in your belief that matter is inert. It is ever
+in motion, and its perpetual activity keeps life a-going throughout the
+universe.”
+
+Thus spake the philosopher Apollodorus. Gallio, who had listened to
+his speech with some degree of impatience, denied that he had fallen a
+victim to the mistakes and contradictions with which the Greek charged
+him. But he failed in refuting successfully the arguments of his
+opponent, as his intellect was not a subtle one and because he demanded
+principally of philosophy the means of rendering men virtuous, and
+because he was interested in useful truths only.
+
+“Try to grasp, Apollodorus,” he said, “that God is none other than
+nature. Nature and himself are one. God and Nature are the two names of
+a single being, just as Novatus and Gallio designate one and the same
+man. God, if you prefer, is divine reason commingling with the earth.
+You need have no fear that he will wear out through this amalgamation,
+since his tenuous substance participates of the fire which consumes all
+matter while remaining unchanged.
+
+“But should, nevertheless,” proceeded Gallio, “my doctrine embrace
+ill-assorted ideas, do not blame me for it, my dear Apollodorus, but
+rather give me praise because I suffer a few contradictions to find
+a place in my mind. Were I not conciliatory as regards my own ideas,
+were I to confer upon a single system an exclusive preference, I could
+no longer tolerate the freedom of every opinion; having destroyed my
+own freedom of thought, I could not readily tolerate it in the case
+of others, and I should forfeit the respect due to every doctrine
+established or professed by a sincere man. The gods forbid that I
+should see my opinion prevail to the exclusion of any other, and
+exercise an absolute sway on other minds. Conjure up a picture, my
+dear friends, of the state of manners and morals, were a sufficient
+number of men firmly to believe that they were the sole possessors
+of the truth, if, by some impossible chance, they were thoroughly
+agreed as to that truth. A too narrow piety among the Athenians, who
+are nevertheless full of wisdom and of doubt, was the cause of the
+banishment of Anaxagoras and of the death of Socrates. What would
+happen were millions of men enslaved by one solitary idea concerning
+the nature of the gods? The genius of the Greeks and the prudence of
+our ancestors made allowance for doubt, and tolerated the worship of
+Jupiter under several names. No sooner should a powerful sect come on
+this ailing earth and proclaim that Jupiter has one name only, than
+blood would flow the world over, and no longer would there be but
+one Caius whose madness should threaten the human race with death.
+All the men of such a sect would be so many Caiuses. They would face
+death for a name. For a name, they would kill, since it is rather in
+the nature of men to kill than to die on behalf of what seems to them
+true and most excellent. Hence it is better to base public order on
+the diversity of opinions, than to seek to establish it on a universal
+consent to one and the same belief. A like unanimous consent could
+never be realised, and in seeking to obtain it, men would become stupid
+and maddened. For, indeed, the most patent truth is but a vain jangle
+of words to the men on whom it is attempted to impose it. You would
+compel me to believe a thing which you understand, but which passes my
+understanding. You would thus be forcing upon me not a thing that is
+intelligible, but one that is incomprehensible. And I am nearer you
+when holding a different belief, one which I understand. For, in that
+case, both of us are making use of our reason, and we both possess an
+intelligent comprehension of our own belief.”
+
+“Enough of all this,” remarked Lollius. “Educated men will never
+combine for the purpose of stifling all other doctrines to the
+advantage of a single one. As to the vulgar herd, who cares to teach
+it that Jupiter has six hundred names, or a single one?”
+
+Cassius, slow of utterance, and of a serious turn of mind, spoke next.
+
+“Beware, Gallio,” he said, “lest the existence of God, such as
+expounded by you, be not in contradiction with the beliefs of our
+forefathers. It matters little, after all, whether your arguments are
+better or worse than those of Apollodorus. What we have to consider
+is the fatherland. To its religion does Rome owe her virtues and her
+power. To destroy our gods is to compass our own destruction.”
+
+“You need not fear, my friend,” rejoined Gallio with some show of
+animation, “have no fear, I repeat, that I deny in an insolent spirit
+the heavenly protectors of the Empire. The only divinity which the
+philosophers acknowledge embodies within itself all the gods, just as
+humanity embraces all men. The gods whose worship was instituted by the
+wisdom of our forefathers, Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Quirinus, and
+Hercules, constitute the most august parts of the universal providence,
+and no less than the whole do these parts exist. No, indeed, I am not
+an impious man, nor inimical to the laws. None respects the sacred
+things more than Gallio.”
+
+No one seemed disposed to dispute these ideas. Thereupon Lollius,
+bringing the conversation back to its starting-point, remarked:
+
+“We have been seeking to penetrate the veil of the future. What are
+man’s destinies, according to you, my friends, after his demise?”
+
+In reply to this question, Annæus Mela promised immortality to heroes
+and wise men, while denying it to the common of mankind.
+
+“It passes belief,” he said, “that misers, gluttons, and mean-spirited
+men should possess an immortal soul. Could so singular a privilege
+be the portion of coarse and silly oafs? I cannot entertain such a
+thought. It would be an insult to the majority of the gods to believe
+that they have decreed the immortality of the boor who wots only of his
+goats and cheeses, or of the freedman, richer than Crœsus, who had no
+other cares in the world than to check the accounts of his stewards.
+Why, good gods, should they be provided with a soul? What sort of a
+figure would they present among heroes and wise men in the Elysian
+fields? These wretches, like so many others here below, are incapable
+of realising humanity’s short-spanned life. How could they realise a
+life of longer duration? Vulgar souls are snuffed out at the hour of
+death, or they may for a while whirl about our globe, to vanish in the
+dense strata of the atmosphere. Virtue only, by making man the equal of
+the gods, makes them participate in their immortality. To quote the
+poet:
+
+    “‘Illustrious virtue never descends into the Stygian shades.
+    Lead a hero’s life, and the fates will not consign thee to the
+    pitiless river of forgetfulness. When comes thy last day, glory
+    will open to thee the path of heaven.’
+
+“Let us realise our condition. We must all die, and all that we are
+must die. The man of shining virtue simply escapes the common destiny
+by becoming god, and by obtaining his admission into Olympus among the
+Heroes and the Gods.”
+
+“But he is not conscious of his own apotheosis,” said Marcus Lollius.
+“There does not exist upon earth a slave or a barbarian who is not
+aware that Augustus is a god. But Augustus knows it not. Hence it is
+that our Cæsars journey reluctantly towards the constellations, and
+even now we see Claudius near with blanched face these shadowy honours.”
+
+Gallio shook his head, and remarked, “The poet Euripides has said:
+
+    “‘We love the life which is revealed unto us upon earth,
+    since we know of no other.’
+
+“Everything that is related concerning the dead is open to doubt, and
+is bound up with fables and falsehoods. Nevertheless, I believe that
+virtuous men attain an immortality of which they are fully cognisant.
+Let it be clearly understood that they achieve it by their own efforts,
+and not as a recompense conferred by the gods. By what right should
+the immortal gods degrade a virtuous man to the extent of rewarding
+him? The leading of a blameless life is its own reward, and no prize is
+there worthy of virtue, which is its own reward. Let us leave to vulgar
+souls, that they may thereby sustain their wretched fortitude, the
+dread of punishment, and the hope of a reward. Let us love virtue for
+its own sake. Gallio, if what the poets tell of the infernal regions
+be true, if after your death you are arraigned before the tribunal of
+Minos, you may say to him: “Minos shall not judge me. By my actions
+have I been judged.””
+
+“How,” inquired Apollodorus the philosopher, “can the gods give to men
+an immortality they themselves do not enjoy?”
+
+Apollodorus, indeed, did not believe in the immortality of the gods, or
+rather that their sway over the world should be exercised for all time.
+
+He proceeded to develop the reasons for his belief.
+
+“The reign of Jupiter,” he said, “began after the Golden Age. We know
+through the traditions preserved for us by the poets that the son of
+Saturn succeeded to his father in the governing of the world. Now,
+everything that had a beginning must have an end. It is foolish to
+suppose that anything finite in one part can be infinite in another. It
+would then become necessary to call it finite and infinite as a whole,
+which would be absurd. Anything possessed of an extreme point can be
+measured from that point itself, and could not in any way cease to be
+measured at any point of its extent, without changing its nature, and
+the proper of what is measurable is to be comprised between two extreme
+points. We may therefore make up our minds that the reign of Jupiter
+will end just as did that of Saturn. As Æschylus has said:
+
+    “‘Jupiter is subordinate to Anankè. He cannot escape his
+    fate.’”
+
+Gallio thought the same, for reasons derived from the observation of
+nature.
+
+“I consider with you, Apollodorus, that the reigns of the gods are
+not immortal, and the observation of the celestial phenomena inclines
+me to this belief. The heavens, as well as the earth, are subject
+to corruption, and the divine palaces, liable to ruin just as the
+dwellings of mankind, crumble under the weight of the centuries. I have
+seen stones fall from the aerial regions. They were blackened and
+corroded by fire, and bore testimony to a celestial conflagration.
+
+“The bodies of the gods, Apollodorus, are not any more exempt from
+injury than their dwellings. If it be true, as Homer teaches, that the
+gods, inhabitants of Olympus, impregnate the flanks of goddesses and
+mortal women, it is assuredly because they are not themselves immortal,
+in spite of their life’s span being greater than that of mankind,
+and hence it is patent that fate subjects them to the necessity of
+transmitting a life which they may not enjoy for ever.
+
+“In truth,” said Lollius, “it is hardly to be conceived that immortals
+should produce children in the same way as human beings and animals,
+or even that they should possess organs adapted to such a purpose. But
+perhaps the loves of the gods owe their origin to the mendacity of the
+poets.”
+
+Apollodorus persisted in his assertion that the reign of Jupiter
+would some day cease, supporting his opinion with subtile reasons. He
+prophesied that Prometheus would succeed the son of Saturn.
+
+“Prometheus,” replied Gallio, “was set free by Hercules with the
+consent of Jupiter, and he enjoys in Olympus the happiness he owes to
+his foresight and to his love of mankind. Nothing will ever happen to
+change his happy fate.”
+
+Apollodorus asked him:
+
+“Who then, according to you, Gallio, shall inherit the thunder which
+sets the world a-quaking?”
+
+“Although it may seem audacious to answer this question,” replied
+Gallio, “I think I am competent to do so, and to name Jove’s successor.”
+
+As he spoke, an officer of the basilica, whose duty it was to call
+cases, approached him, and informed him that some suitors were waiting
+for him in court.
+
+The proconsul asked if the matter was one of paramount importance.
+
+“It is a most petty case, Gallio,” replied the officer of the basilica.
+“A man from the harbour of Cenchreæ has just dragged a stranger before
+your tribunal. They are both Jews and of humble condition. They are
+quarrelling over some barbarian custom or some gross superstition, as
+is the wont of Syrians. Here is the minute of their case. It is all
+Punic to the clerk who wrote it.
+
+“The plaintiff sets forth, Gallio, that he is the head of the assembly
+of the Jews or, as one says in Greek, of the synagogue, and he begs
+justice of you against a man from Tarsus, who, recently settled at
+Cenchreæ, goes every Saturday to the synagogue, for the purpose of
+speaking against the Jewish law. ‘It is a scandal and an abomination,
+which thou shalt put an end to,’ says the plaintiff, and he clamours
+for the integrity of the privileges belonging to the children of
+Israel. The defendant claims for all those who believe his teachings
+adoption and incorporation into the family of a man named Abraham, and
+he threatens the plaintiff with the divine ire. You see, Gallio, that
+the case is a petty and ambiguous one. It rests with you to decide
+whether you will take the case yourself, or whether you will leave it
+to be judged by a lesser magistrate.”
+
+The proconsul’s friends begged him not to disturb himself for so
+miserable an affair.
+
+“I make it my duty,” he said in response to their prayers, “to follow
+in this respect the rules laid down by the divine Augustus. I must
+therefore try personally, not only important cases, but also smaller
+ones, when the jurisprudence concerning them has not been determined.
+Certain light cases recur daily and are of importance, if only for
+their frequency. It is meet that I should personally try one of each
+class. A judgment rendered by a proconsul serves as an example, and
+establishes a precedent in law.”
+
+“You deserve praise, Gallio,” said Lollius, “for the zeal you display
+in the fulfilment of your consular duties. But, acquainted as I am with
+your wisdom, I doubt whether it is agreeable for you to render justice.
+That which men honour with this title is really an administration of
+base prudence and of cruel revenge. Human laws are the daughters of
+fear and anger.”
+
+Gallio protested feebly against this definition. He did not admit that
+human laws bore the character of real justice, saying:
+
+“The punishment of crime consists in its commission. The penalty
+added thereto by the laws is superfluous, and does not fit the crime.
+However, since through the fault of mankind laws there are, we should
+apply them equitably.”
+
+Thereupon he told the officer of the court that he would proceed to the
+tribunal very shortly, and, turning towards his friends, he said:
+
+“To speak truly, I have a special reason for looking into this case
+with my own eyes. I must not neglect any opportunity of keeping an eye
+on these Jews of Cenchreæ, a turbulent, rancorous race, which shows
+contempt for the laws, and which it is not easy to hold in check. If
+ever the peace of Corinth should be troubled, it will be by them. This
+port, where all the ships of the East come to anchor, conceals amid a
+congested mass of warehouses and taverns, a countless horde of thieves,
+eunuchs, soothsayers, sorcerers, lepers, desecraters of graves, and
+assassins. It is the haunt of every abomination and of every form of
+superstition. Isis, Eschmoun, the Phœnician Venus, and the god of the
+Jews, are all worshipped there. I am alarmed at seeing those unclean
+Jews multiply, rather in the way of fishes than in that of mankind.
+They swarm about the miry streets of the harbour like crabs under the
+rocks.”
+
+“What is more dreadful is that they infest Rome to a like extent,”
+exclaimed Lucius Cassius. “To great Pompey’s own door must be laid
+the crime of introducing this plague of leprosy into the City. He it
+was who committed the wrong of not treating as did our ancestors the
+prisoners he brought from Judæa for his triumphal entry into the City,
+and they have peopled the right bank of the Tiber with their base
+spawn. Dwelling about the base of the Janiculum, amid the tanneries,
+the gut-works, and the fermenting-troughs, in the suburbs whither
+flock all the abominations and horrors of the world, they earn their
+livelihood at the vilest of trades, unloading lighters, selling rags
+and refuse, and exchanging matches for broken glasses. Their women tell
+fortunes in the houses of the wealthy; their children beg from the
+frequenters of Egeria’s groves. As you rightly said, Gallio, hostile to
+the human race and to themselves, they are ever fomenting sedition. A
+few years back, the followers of a certain Chrestus or Cherestus raised
+bloody riots among the Jews. The Porta Portuensis was put to fire and
+sword, and Cæsar was compelled to exercise severe repression, in spite
+of his forbearance. He expelled from Rome the leaders of the movement.”
+
+“Full well do I know it,” said Gallio. “Several of these exiles came to
+Cenchreæ, among others a Jew and a Jewess from the Pontus, who still
+dwell there, following some humble trade. I believe that they weave
+the coarse stuffs of Cilicia. I have not learnt anything noteworthy
+in regard to the partisans of Chrestus. As to Chrestus himself, I am
+ignorant of what has become of him, and whether he is still of this
+world.”
+
+“I am as ignorant on this score as you are, Gallio,” resumed Lucius
+Cassius, “and no one will ever know it. These vile wretches do not so
+much as attain celebrity in the annals of crime. Moreover, there are so
+many slaves of the name of Chrestus that it would be no easy matter to
+distinguish a particular one amid the throng.
+
+“It is but a trifling matter that the Jews should cause tumult within
+the low purlieus where their number and their lowliness protect
+them from supervision. They swarm through the city, they ingratiate
+themselves into families, and are everywhere a source of trouble. They
+shout in the Forum on behalf of the agitators who pay them, and these
+despicable foreigners incite the citizens to a hatred of one another.
+Too long have we endured their presence in popular assemblages, and
+for a long time now have public speakers avoided running counter to the
+opinion of these wretches, for fear of their insults. Obstinate in the
+observance of their barbarian law, they wish to subject others to it,
+and they find adepts among the Asiatics, and even among the Greeks.
+And, what is hardly to be credited, they impose their customs on the
+Latins themselves. There are, in the City, whole quarters where all the
+shops are closed on their Sabbath day. Oh the shame of Rome! And, while
+corrupting the lowly folk among whom they dwell, their kings, admitted
+into Cæsar’s palace, insolently practise their superstitions, and
+set to all citizens a detestable and noted example. Thus do the Jews
+inoculate Italy on all sides with an oriental venom.”
+
+Annæus Mela, who had travelled over the whole of the Roman world,
+sought to make his friends realise the extent of the evil they deplored.
+
+“The Jews corrupt the whole world,” he said. “There is not a Greek
+city, there are hardly any barbarian towns where work does not cease
+on the seventh day, where lamps are not lit, where their keeping of
+fast-days is not followed, and where the abstaining from the flesh of
+certain animals is not observed in imitation of them.
+
+“I have met in Alexandria an aged Jew not lacking in intelligence, who
+was even versed in Greek literature. He rejoiced at the progress of
+his religion in the Empire. ‘In proportion to the knowledge foreigners
+acquire of our laws,’ he told me, ‘do they find them pleasant, and they
+conform readily to them, both Romans and Greeks, those who dwell on
+the mainland and the people of the isles, Eastern and Western nations,
+Europe and Asia.’ The ancient one spoke perhaps with some degree of
+exaggeration. Still one sees a number of Greeks yielding to the beliefs
+of the Jews.”
+
+Apollodorus sharply denied such to be the case.
+
+“The Greeks who judaise,” he said, “are not to be met with except
+amid the dregs of the populace, and among the barbarians wandering
+about Greece, as brigands and tramps. The followers of the Stammerer
+may, however, have persuaded some few ignorant Greeks, by inducing
+them to believe that the ideas of Plato are to be found in the Hebrew
+scriptures. Such is the lie which they strive to spread.”
+
+“It is a fact,” replied Gallio, “that the Jews recognise an only,
+invisible, almighty god, who has created the earth. But they are far
+from worshipping him with wisdom. They publicly proclaim that this god
+is the enemy of all that is not Jewish, and that he will not tolerate
+in his temple either the effigies of the other gods, or the statue of
+Cæsar, or his own images. They regard as impious those who fashion
+out of perishable matter a god the image of man. Various reasons, some
+of them good and in harmony with the ideas which we conceive in regard
+to the divine providence, are adduced why this god should not be given
+expression to in marble or in bronze. But what can be thought, dear
+Apollodorus, of a god sufficiently inimical to the Republic that he
+will not admit in his sanctuary the statues of the Prince? How conceive
+a god who takes offence at the honours rendered to other gods? And
+what opinion can one have of a nation which credits its gods with like
+sentiments! The Jews look upon the gods of the Latins, Greeks and
+Barbarians as hostile gods, and they carry superstition to the point of
+believing that they possess a full and complete knowledge of God, one
+to which nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be subtracted.
+
+“As you are aware, my dear friends, it is not sufficient to tolerate
+every religion; we should honour them all, believe that all are sacred,
+that they are all coequal in the sincerity of those professing them,
+and that similar to arrows shot from various points towards the same
+goal, they all meet in the bosom of God. Alone the religion which only
+tolerates itself, cannot be endured. Were it to be permitted to spread,
+it would absorb all others. Nay, so unsociable a religion is not a
+religion, but rather an abligion, and no longer a bond that unites
+pious men, but one severing that sacred bond. It is the most impious
+of things. Can, indeed, a greater insult be offered to the deity than
+to worship it under a particular form, while at one and the same time
+dooming it to execration under all the other forms it assumes in the
+eyes of men?
+
+“What! Because I sacrifice to Jupiter crowned with a bushel, I am
+to forbid a foreigner from sacrificing to a Jupiter whose head of
+hair, similar to the flower of the hyacinth, drops uncrowned over his
+shoulders; and that, impious man that I should be, I should still
+consider myself a worshipper of Jupiter! No, by all means no! The
+religious man bound to the immortal gods is equally bound to all men by
+the religion which embraces both the earth and the heavens. Odious is
+the error of the Jews who believe they are pious in that they worship
+their god alone!”
+
+“They suffer themselves to be circumcised in his honour,” spoke Annæus
+Mela. “In order that this mutilation should not be noticed, it is
+necessary, when frequenting the public baths, for them to conceal that
+which should neither be made a display of, nor covered as a thing of
+shame. For it is alike ridiculous for a man to pride himself on, or
+to be ashamed of, what he shares in common with all men. We have good
+cause to dread, my friends, the progress of Judaic customs in the
+Empire. There is, however, no cause to fear that Romans and Greeks will
+adopt circumcision. It passes belief that this custom is likely to make
+its way among the Barbarians who, however, would feel the disgrace of
+it to a lesser degree, since they are, for the greater part, absurd
+enough to reckon as disgraceful for a man to appear before his fellow
+men in a state of nudity.”
+
+“While I think of it!” exclaimed Lollius. “When our gentle Canidia,
+the flower of the matrons of the Esquiline, sends her beautiful slaves
+to the hot baths, she compels them to wear drawers, as she grudges
+everybody even a view of what is most dear to her about their bodies.
+By Pollux, she will be the cause of their being taken for Jews, an
+insulting supposition, even for a slave.”
+
+Lucius Cassius resumed, revealing the irritation which consumed him:
+
+“I cannot say whether the Jewish folly will overtake the whole world.
+But it is past endurance that this madness should spread among the
+ignorant, that it should be tolerated in the Empire, that this fœtid
+race, which has descended to every form of turpitude, absurd and
+sordid in its manners and customs, impious and villainous in its laws,
+and execrated by the immortal gods, should be suffered to exist. The
+obscene Syrian is corrupting the City of Rome. We have cast aside with
+contempt our ancient usages, and the salutary methods of discipline
+of our ancestors. We no longer serve these masters of the earth, who
+conquered it for us. Which of us still believes in the haruspices? Who
+is there with any respect for the augurs? Who shows reverence to Mars
+and the divine Twins? Oh the sad neglect of our religious duties! Italy
+has repudiated her indigenous gods, and her tutelary genii. She is
+henceforth on all sides at the mercy of foreign superstitions, and is
+handed over defenceless to the impure horde of oriental priests. Alas,
+did Rome conquer the world only to be conquered by the Jews? Warnings
+have assuredly not been lacking. The overflowing of the Tiber and the
+grain famine are certainly not doubtful manifestations of the divine
+ire. No day passes without its sinister presage. The earth quakes, the
+sun is veiled, while lightning flashes in a clear sky. Wonders follow
+upon wonders. Birds of ill omen have been seen to perch on the summit
+of the Capitol. An ox has been heard to speak on the Etruscan shore.
+Women have brought forth monsters; a wailing voice has sounded amid the
+recreations of the theatre. The statue of Victory has dropped the reins
+of her chariot.”
+
+“The hosts of the celestial palaces,” remarked Lollius, “have strange
+ways of making themselves heard. If they desire a little more incense,
+or sigh for a few more fat offerings, let them say so plainly, instead
+of expressing their wishes by means of thunder, clouds, crows, bronze
+statues, and two-headed children. Moreover, you must admit, Lucius,
+theirs is a far too one-sided part when they presage the evils
+threatening us, since, in the natural course of things, not a day goes
+by but what brings some individual or public misfortune.”
+
+Gallio exhibited distress at the sorrows of Cassius.
+
+“Claudius,” he remarked, “Claudius, although he is always dozing, has
+deeply felt this great peril. He has complained to the Senate of the
+contempt into which ancient usages have been suffered to fall. Alarmed
+at the progress of foreign superstitions, the Senate has, on his
+recommendation, re-established haruspices. But it is not sufficient
+that the observance of the ceremonial rites of worship should be
+restored; rather is it necessary once more to instil into men’s hearts
+their primitive purity. The souls of virtuous men constitute the proper
+shrine of the gods in this world. Give a home within your hearts to
+past virtues once more, simplicity, good faith, love of the public
+welfare, and the gods will immediately re-enter them. You shall then
+yourselves be temples and altars.”
+
+He spoke, and, taking leave of his friends, entered his litter, which,
+for some little time past, had been awaiting him near a clump of
+myrtle-bushes to convey him to the tribunal.
+
+His friends had risen from their seats, and leaving the grounds,
+followed leisurely behind him under a double portico, so disposed as to
+afford shadow at all hours of the day, and leading from the walls of
+the villa to the basilica where the proconsul dispensed justice.
+
+By the way, Lucius Cassius expressed to Mela his regret at the oblivion
+into which the ancient methods of discipline had fallen.
+
+Marcus Lollius, placing a hand on the shoulder of Apollodorus, said:
+
+“It seems to me that neither our gentle Gallio nor Mela, nor even
+Cassius, have stated their reasons for their deep hatred of the Jews.
+I think I know, and I am going to tell you, most dear Apollodorus.
+The Romans who offer up to the gods a white sow ornamented with white
+bands, execrate the Jews who refuse to partake of pork. It is not in
+vain that the fates sent to the pious Æneas a white female boar as a
+presage. Had the gods not studded with oaks the wild realms of Evander
+and Turnus, Rome would not be to-day the mistress of the world. The
+acorns of Latium fattened the swine whose flesh has alone appeased
+the insatiable hunger of the magnanimous descendants of Remus. Our
+Italians, whose bodies are built on boars and pigs, feel offended
+at the proud abstinence of the Jews, who persist in casting aside as
+unclean victuals the fat sounders, beloved of old Cato, which furnish
+food to the masters of the Universe.”
+
+Thus discoursing pleasantly, and enjoying the kindly shade, the four
+friends reached the furthermost end of the portico, when of a sudden
+the Forum appeared before them in a glitter of light.
+
+At that early hour, it was all astir with the coming and going of
+noisy crowds. In the centre of the square stood a bronze Minerva on a
+pedestal on which were sculptured the Muses, and to the right and to
+the left stood a Mercury and a bronze Apollo, the work of Hermogenes of
+Cythera. A Neptune with a green beard arose from the centre of a basin.
+At the feet of the god, a dolphin vomited forth water.
+
+The Forum was surrounded in all directions by monuments, the
+high columns and the arches of which revealed the Roman style of
+architecture. Facing the portico by way of which Mela and his friends
+had come, the Propylæ, surmounted by two gilded chariots, formed the
+boundary of the public square, and led, by way of marble steps, to the
+broad and straight road of the harbour of Lechæum. On either side of
+these heroic gates rose in kingly fashion the painted pediments of the
+sanctuaries, the Pantheon, and the temple of Artemis of Ephesus. The
+temple of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, dominated the Forum, and
+looked upon the sea.
+
+Between it and the basilica ran an insignificant little street. The
+building rose over two stories of arcades supported by pillars flanked
+with Doric half-columns forming a square. The Roman style, which
+stamped its character upon all the other buildings of the city, was
+patent. There remained of the pristine Corinth nothing but the calcined
+ruins of an old temple.
+
+The lower arcades of the basilica were open and served as shops
+to sellers of fruit, vegetables, oil, wine and fried foods, to
+bird-fanciers, jewellers, booksellers, and barbers. Money-changers sat
+at little tables laden with gold and silver coins. From the gloomy
+hollow of these stalls emerged shouts, laughter, hailings, the noise
+of disputes, and pungent odours. On the marble steps, wherever their
+slabs were tinted blue by the shade, loafers shook dice or tossed
+knuckle-bones, suitors paced to and fro with anxious mien, sailors
+gravely looked for the pleasures upon which they should squander
+their wages, while quidnuncs read news from Rome written for them
+by frivolous Greeks. Blended with this crowd of Corinthians and
+foreigners, numerous blind beggars persistently obtruded themselves, as
+well as callow and rouged youths, matchsellers and crippled sailors
+from whose necks depended a picture of the wreck of their ships. Doves
+flew in flocks from the roof of the basilica down to the large open
+spaces on which the sun shone, and picked up grain between the cracks
+of the heated flagstones.
+
+A girl of twelve, dark and velvety as a pansy of Xanthus, placed on
+the ground her little brother, as yet unable to walk, put beside him a
+chipped bowl filled with porridge and a wooden spoon, saying to him:
+
+“Eat, Comatas, eat and keep quiet, or that red horse will have you.”
+
+Then, holding an obolus in her hand, she ran towards the fish-dealer,
+whose wrinkled face and naked breast, the colour of saffron, appeared
+amid baskets lined with seaweed.
+
+While she was thus engaged, a dove hovering about the little Comatas
+got its talons entangled in the child’s locks. The boy began to cry,
+and to call his sister to his help, screaming in a voice choked with
+sobs:
+
+“Joessa! Joessa!”
+
+But Joessa heard him not. She was rummaging in the old man’s baskets,
+amid the fish and the shell-fish, for something that would improve the
+taste of her stale bread. Naturally she did not pick out a peacock-fish
+or a smaris, whose flesh is most delicate, but which cost money. She
+brought away in the hollow of her gown, which she had tucked up, three
+handfuls of sea-urchins and sticklebacks.
+
+Meanwhile little Comatas, his mouth wide open, and drinking his own
+tears, was still bawling:
+
+“Joessa! Joessa!”
+
+Unlike Jove’s eagle, the bird of Venus did not carry off little Comatas
+into the glorious skies. It left him on the earth, taking with it in
+its flight, between its pink talons, three golden hairs from his matted
+locks.
+
+The child, with cheeks glistening with tears and begrimed with dust,
+clenching his wooden spoon in his tiny fists, was sobbing beside his
+overturned bowl.
+
+Annæus Mela, followed by his three friends, had reached the top of the
+basilica’s steps. Alike heedless of the noise and stir of the idle
+multitude, he was imparting information to Cassius in regard to the
+future renovation of the universe.
+
+“On a day determined by the gods,” he said, “the things existing
+to-day, whose order and disposition claim our attention, will be
+destroyed. Stars will clash with stars, all matters composing the
+earth, the air, and the waters will be consumed in one conflagration.
+Human souls, imperceptible _débris_ amid the universal destruction,
+will be resolved anew into their primitive elements. An entirely new
+world....”
+
+As he uttered the words, Annæus Mela stumbled against a sleeper
+stretched out in the shade. It was an old man who had artistically
+gathered about his dust-covered body the ragged remnants of his cloak.
+His wallet, his sandals, and his stick lay beside him.
+
+The proconsul’s brother, ever courteous and kindly, even to men of the
+lowliest class, was about to apologise, but the recumbent individual
+did not allow him time to do so.
+
+“Try and see where you put your feet, you brute,” he exclaimed, “and
+give alms to the philosopher Posocharis.”
+
+“I perceive a wallet and a stick,” smilingly replied the Roman, “but so
+far I do not see any philosopher.”
+
+Just as he was about to toss a piece of silver to Posocharis,
+Apollodorus stayed his hand, saying:
+
+“Do not give him anything, Annæus. It is not a philosopher; nay, not
+even a man.”
+
+“But I am one,” replied Mela, “if I give him money, and he is a man if
+he takes this coin. For, alone among all animals, man does both these
+things. And can you not see that for the sake of a small coin I satisfy
+myself that I am a better man than he? Your master teaches that he who
+gives is better than he who receives.”
+
+Posocharis took the coin. Then he hurled coarse invectives at Annæus
+Mela and his companions, stigmatising them as arrogant and as
+debauchees, and referring them to the jugglers and harlots who walked
+past them with undulating hips. Then, baring to the navel his hairy
+body, and drawing over his face his tattered cloak, he once more
+stretched himself out at full length on the pavement.
+
+“Would it not interest you,” asked Lollius of his companions, “to hear
+those Jews expound their dispute in the prætorium?”
+
+They replied that they entertained no such curiosity, preferring to
+stroll under the portico, while waiting for the proconsul, who would
+doubtless not be long in coming out.
+
+“I am with you, my friends,” said Lollius. “We shall not miss anything
+very interesting.”
+
+“Moreover,” he went on to say, “the Jews who have come from Cenchreæ to
+accompany the suitors are not all in the basilica. Here comes one who
+is recognisable by his beaked nose and his forked beard. He is in as
+fine a state of frenzy as Pythia herself.”
+
+Lollius was pointing with both look and finger at a lean stranger,
+poorly clad, who was vociferating under the portico, in the midst of a
+railing mob.
+
+“Men of Corinth, you place a vain trust in your wisdom, which is naught
+but madness. You follow blindly the precepts of your philosophers who
+teach you death, and not life. You do not observe the natural law, and
+in order to punish you, God has delivered you unto unnatural vices....”
+
+A sailor, who had just joined the group of spectators, recognised the
+man, for, with a shrug of the shoulders, he muttered:
+
+“Why, ’tis Stephanas, the Jew of Cenchreæ, who brings once more some
+extraordinary piece of news from his trip to the skies, into which he
+ascended, if we are to credit him.”
+
+And Stephanas was teaching the people.
+
+“The Christian is not bound by law and concupiscence. He is exempt from
+damnation through the mercy of God, who sent his only son to assume a
+sinful body, in order to destroy sin. But ye shall only be delivered
+if, breaking with the flesh, you live according to the spirit.
+
+“The Jews observe the laws, and believe that they are saved by their
+works. But it is their faith which saves them, and not their works. Of
+what use is it to them to be circumcised in fact, if their heart is
+uncircumcised?
+
+“Men of Corinth, glory in the faith, and ye shall be incorporated into
+the family of Abraham.”
+
+The mob was beginning to laugh and jeer at these obscure utterances.
+Still the Jew continued prophesying in hollow tones. He was announcing
+a great manifestation of wrath and the all-destroying fire which was to
+consume the earth.
+
+“And these things shall come to pass in my lifetime,” he cried, “and
+I shall witness them with mine own eyes. The hour has come for us to
+awaken from our sleep. The night has passed, and the day is dawning.
+The Saints will rejoice in Heaven, and those who have not believed in
+Jesus crucified shall perish.”
+
+Then, promising the resurrection of the body, he invoked Anastasis,
+amid the jeers of the hilarious crowd.
+
+Just then, a leather-lunged man, Milo the baker, a member of the
+Corinthian Senate, who for some time past had been listening to the Jew
+with impatience, came up to him, took him by the arm, and shaking him
+roughly said:
+
+“Cease, you wretch, spouting idle words. All this is children’s fables
+and nonsense fit to capture a woman’s mind. How canst thou, on the
+strength of thy dreams, indulge in such foolery, casting aside all
+that is beautiful, and taking pleasure in what is evil only, without
+even deriving any advantage from thy hatred? Renounce your strange
+phantasies, your perverse designs, your gloomy forebodings, lest a god
+abandon you to the crows, to punish you for your imprecations against
+this city and the Empire.”
+
+The citizens applauded Milo’s speech.
+
+“He speaks truly,” they shouted. “Those Syrians have but one design:
+they seek to weaken our fatherland. They are the enemies of Cæsar.”
+
+A number of them abstracted from the fruiterers’ stalls gourds and
+locust-beans, others picked up oyster-shells, and flung them at the
+apostle, who was still vaticinating.
+
+Thrown down the steps of the portico, he wended his way through the
+Forum, shouting, amid a storm of hooting, insults, and blows, pelted
+with dirt, bleeding, and half naked:
+
+“My Master has said it, we are the sweepings of the world.”
+
+And he exulted in his joy.
+
+The children pursued him on the Cenchreæ road, yelling.
+
+“Anastasis! Anastasis!”
+
+Posocharis was not sleeping. Hardly had the friends of the proconsul
+gone away, when he raised himself upon his elbow. Seated on a step,
+a short distance from him, the swarthy Joessa was crunching between
+her teeth the shell of a sea-urchin. The cynic hailed her and showed
+her the glittering piece of silver he had just received. Then, having
+readjusted his rags and tatters, he rose, slipped his feet into his
+sandals, picked up his stick and wallet, and went down the steps.
+Joessa went up to him, relieved him of his wallet full of holes, which
+she gravely placed on her shoulder, as if to carry it as an offering
+to the august Cypris, and followed the old man.
+
+Apollodorus saw them taking the Cenchreæ road with the object of
+reaching the cemetery of the slaves, and the place of execution
+conspicuous from afar by the swarms of crows which hovered over the
+crosses. The philosopher and the young girl knew there a clump of
+arbutus always deserted, and favourable to dalliance with Eros.
+
+At the sight of this, Apollodorus, pulling Mela by the flap of his
+toga, remarked:
+
+“Just look. No sooner has that cur received your alms than he decoys a
+child, in order to mate with her.”
+
+“Which goes to prove,” answered Mela, “that I gave money to the kind of
+man who knows full well what to do with it.”
+
+Meanwhile, the brat Comatas, squatting on the heated flagstone and
+sucking his thumbs, was laughing at the sight of a pebble glistening in
+the sun.
+
+“Besides,” resumed Mela, “you must admit, Apollodorus, that the way
+in which Posocharis makes love is not a bit philosophical. The dog is
+assuredly wiser than our young debauchees of the Palatine, who love
+amid perfumes, tears, and laughter, with languor or with passion...”
+
+As he spoke, a hoarse clamour arose in the prætorium, deafening to the
+ears of the Greek and the three Romans.
+
+“By Pollux!” exclaimed Lollius, “the suitors whose case our friend
+Gallio is trying are shouting like dockers, and it seems to me that
+together with their growls a stench of sweat and onions reaches us.”
+
+“Nothing is more true,” quoth Apollodorus. “But, were Posocharis a
+philosopher instead of the dog he is, far from sacrificing to the Venus
+of the cross-roads, he would flee from the whole breed of women, and
+attach himself solely to some youth, whose eternal comeliness he would
+contemplate merely as the expression of an inner beauty more noble and
+more precious.”
+
+“Love,” resumed Mela, “is an abject passion. It disturbs the reason,
+destroys noble impulses, and diverts the most elevated ideas to the
+vilest cares. It has no place in a sensible mind. As the poet Euripides
+teaches us....”
+
+Mela did not finish his sentence. Preceded by lictors, who pushed the
+crowd aside, the proconsul came out of the basilica, and went up to his
+friends.
+
+“I have not been away from you long,” he said. “The case which I was
+summoned to try was as meagre as could be, and ridiculous in the
+extreme. On entering the prætorium, I found it invaded by a motley
+crowd of the Jews who, in their sordid shops along the wharves of the
+harbour of Cenchreæ, sell carpets, stuffs, and petty articles of
+silver and gold jewellery to the sailors. The atmosphere was filled
+with their shrill yelping, and with a pungent odour of goat. It was
+with difficulty that I could grasp the meaning of their words, and it
+cost me an effort to understand that one of those Jews, Sosthenes by
+name, who styled himself the chief of the synagogue, was charging with
+impiety another Jew, the latter, repulsively ugly, bandy-legged, and
+blear-eyed, and named Paul or Saul, a native of Tarsus, who has for
+some time past been exercising in Corinth his trade of weaver, and has
+gone into partnership with certain Jews expelled from Rome, for the
+weaving of tent-cloths and Cilician garments in goat-hair. They all
+spoke at once, and in very bad Greek. I made out, however, that this
+Sosthenes imputed as a crime to this Paul that he had entered the house
+wherein the Jews of Corinth are in the habit of meeting every Saturday,
+and had spoken with the object of seducing his co-religionists, and of
+persuading them to worship their god in a fashion contrary to their
+law. I had heard enough. So having, not without difficulty, silenced
+them, I informed them that had they come to me to complain of some
+matter of wrong or of some deed of violence wherefrom they might have
+suffered injury, I should have listened to them with patience, and
+with all the necessary attention; but, since their case turned simply
+upon a question of words, and a disagreement in regard to their law,
+it concerned me not, and that I could not be judge of such matters. I
+thereupon dismissed them with these words: ‘Settle your quarrels among
+yourselves, as best you see fit.’”
+
+“What did they say to that?” asked Cassius. “Did they submit with good
+grace to so wise a decision?”
+
+“It is not in the nature of brutes,” replied the proconsul, “to relish
+wisdom. Those fellows greeted my decision with harsh murmurings of
+which, as you may well imagine, I took no notice. I left them shouting
+and struggling at the foot of the tribunal. From what I could see,
+most of the blows fell to the plaintiff. He will be left for dead, if
+my lictors do not interfere. These Jews from the harbour are great
+ignoramuses, and like most ignorant people, not enjoying the faculty of
+supporting with arguments the truth of what they believe, they know no
+other argument than kicks and fisticuffs.
+
+“The friends of that little deformed and blear-eyed Jew named Paul seem
+to be particularly clever at that kind of controversy. Ye gods! How
+they got the better of the chief of the synagogue, raining blows on
+him, and trampling him under their feet! But I do not doubt that had
+the friends of Sosthenes been the stronger of the two parties, they
+would have treated Paul as the friends of Paul treated Sosthenes.”
+
+Mela congratulated the proconsul.
+
+“You were right, brother mine, in sending those wretched litigants
+about their business.”
+
+“Could I do otherwise?” replied Gallio. “How could I have decided
+between that Sosthenes and that Paul who are the one as stupid and
+as rabid as the other?... If I treat them with contempt, do not, my
+friends, think that is because they are poor and humble, because
+Sosthenes reeks of salted fish, or for the reason that Paul’s fingers
+have become worn in weaving carpets and tent-cloth. No, Philemon and
+Baucis were poor, yet worthy of the highest honours. The gods did not
+disdain being entertained at their frugal board. Wisdom raises a slave
+above his master. Nay, a virtuous slave is superior to the gods. If
+he is their equal in wisdom, he surpasses them in the beauty of the
+accomplishment. Those Jews are to be despised simply because they are
+boorish, and that no image of the divinity is reflected in them.”
+
+A smile overspread the countenance of Marcus Lollius at these word.
+
+“Truly, the gods,” he said, “would hardly frequent the Syrians who
+infest the harbours, amid the sellers of fruit and the strumpets.”
+
+“The Barbarians themselves,” resumed the proconsul, “possess some
+knowledge of the gods. Not to mention the Egyptians, who, in the olden
+days, were men filled with piety, there is not in wealthy Asia a
+nation which has not worshipped Diana, Vulcan, Juno, or the mother of
+the Æneædes. They give these divinities strange names, confused forms,
+and sometimes offer up to them human sacrifices, but they recognise
+their power. Alone are the Jews ignorant of the providence of the gods.
+I know not whether that Paul, whom the Syrians also call Saul, is as
+superstitious as the others, and as obstinate in his errors. I know
+not what obscure idea he conceives of the immortal gods, and to tell
+the truth, I am not concerned to know it. What is there to be learned
+of those who know nothing! It amounts, to put it plainly, to educating
+oneself in ignorance. I gathered from some of his confused expressions
+in my presence and in reply to his accuser, that he joins issue with
+the priests of his nation, that he repudiates the religion of the
+Jews, and that he worships Orpheus under an assumed name which has
+escaped me. What makes me suppose this, is that he speaks with respect
+of a god, or rather of a hero, who is supposed to have descended into
+Hades, and to have reascended into the heavens, after having wandered
+among the pallid shades of the dead. He may perhaps have set himself
+to worship some subterranean Mercury. I should, however, feel more
+inclined to believe that he worships Adonis, for I think I heard him
+say that, following in the steps of the women of Byblos, he wept over
+the sufferings and the death of a god.
+
+“These youthful gods, who die and come to life again, abound on Asiatic
+soil. The Syrian courtesans have brought several of them to Rome, and
+these celestial youths please, more than is proper, our respectable
+women. Our matrons do not blush to celebrate their mysterious rites in
+private. My Julia, so prudent and so self-contained, has repeatedly
+asked me how much should be believed of them. ‘What kind of a god,’
+have I answered her with indignation, ‘what can be the god who takes
+delight in the stealthy homage of a married dame? A woman should know
+no other friends than those of her husband. And do not the gods stand
+first in order among our friends?’”
+
+“Does not this man of Tarsus,” inquired the philosopher Apollodorus,
+“pay reverence rather to Typhon, whom the Egyptians call Sethon? It
+is said that a god with an ass’s head is shown honour by a certain
+Jewish sect. This god can be no other than Typhon, and I should not be
+surprised if the weavers of Cenchreæ held a secret intercourse with the
+Immortal, who, according to our gentle Marcus, committed so disgusting
+an outrage on the old woman who sold cakes.”
+
+“I know not,” resumed Gallio. “They do indeed say that a number of
+Syrians meet to celebrate in secret the worship of a god with a
+donkey’s head. It may be that Paul is one of them. But what matters
+the Adonis, the Mercury, the Orpheus, or the Typhon of that Jew? He
+will never reign over any but the female fortune-tellers, the usurers,
+and the sordid traders who spoil the sailors in seaports. At the very
+utmost will he be able to win over, in the suburbs of the big cities, a
+few handfuls of slaves.”
+
+“Oho! Oho!” exclaimed Marcus Lollius in an outburst of laughter, “can
+you see that hideous Paul founding a religion of slaves? By Castor,
+it would indeed be a miraculous novelty! Should perchance the god of
+the slaves (may Jove avert the omen!) climb up into Olympus and expel
+therefrom the gods of the empire, what would he do in turn? In what way
+would he exercise his power over the astonished world? I should enjoy
+seeing him at work. He would no doubt keep up the Saturnalia during the
+entire course of the year. He would open to gladiators the road to the
+highest honours, establish the prostitutes of the Suburra in the temple
+of Vesta, and perhaps make of some wretched straggling village in Syria
+the capital of the world.”
+
+Lollius might have followed up his jest for some time had Gallio not
+interrupted him.
+
+“Marcus,” he said, “do not entertain the hope of witnessing these
+marvellous novelties. Although men are capable of stupendous acts of
+folly, it is not a little Jew weaver who could seduce them with his bad
+Greek and his tales about a Syrian Orpheus. The slaves’ god could but
+foment uprisings and servile wars, which would be promptly put down in
+blood, and he would soon perish himself, together with his worshippers,
+in an amphitheatre, under the teeth of wild beasts, to the plaudits of
+the Roman people.
+
+“Enough of Paul and Sosthenes. Their mind would not be of any help to
+us in the quest we were engaged upon ere they so untowardly interrupted
+us. We were seeking to know the future the gods have in store for us,
+not for you, dear friends, or for me in particular (for we are prepared
+to endure all that is to be), but for the fatherland and for the human
+race which we love and towards which we feel kindly. It is not that Jew
+weaver, with his inflamed eyelids, who could tell us, whatever Marcus
+may think, the name of the god who is to dethrone Jupiter.”
+
+Gallio broke off his speech to dismiss the lictors, who stood
+motionless in line before him, shouldering their fasces.
+
+“We require neither the rods nor the axes,” he remarked with a smile.
+“Speech is our only weapon. May the day come when the universe shall
+know no others. If you are not tired, my friends, let us walk towards
+the Pirene fountain. We shall find midway an old fig-tree under which,
+so it is related, the betrayed Medea meditated her cruel revenge. The
+Corinthians hold the tree in reverence, in memory of that jealous
+queen, and suspend votive tablets from its branches, for Medea never
+brought them but good. It has cleft the earth with its branches,
+which have thrown out roots, and it is still crowned with a luxuriant
+foliage. Seated in its shade, we can while away time with conversation
+till our bath-hour.”
+
+The children, weary of pursuing Stephanas, were playing at
+knuckle-bones by the roadside. The apostle was striding along rapidly,
+when he came across, near the place of execution, a band of Jews, who
+had come up from Cenchreæ to ascertain the judgment rendered by the
+proconsul in regard to the synagogue. They were friends of Sosthenes,
+and were greatly irritated against the Jew of Tarsus and his adherents
+because they sought to change the law. Noticing the man, who was
+wiping with his sleeve his eyes blinded with blood, they thought they
+recognised him, and one of them, pulling him by the beard, asked him if
+he were not Stephanas, the companion of Paul.
+
+Proudly he answered:
+
+“Behold him!”
+
+He was quickly thrown to the ground, and trampled under foot. The Jews
+were picking up stones and shouting:
+
+“He is a blasphemer! Stone him!”
+
+A couple of the most zealous tore up the milestone sunk by the Romans,
+and were endeavouring to heave it at him. The stones fell with a dull
+thud on the skinny bones of the apostle, who yelled:
+
+“Oh the delight of these wounds! Oh the joy of these sufferings! Oh the
+refreshment of this torture! I behold Jesus.”
+
+A few steps farther off, under an arbutus, and to the murmurings of a
+spring, old Posocharis was pressing in his arms the smooth flanks of
+Joessa. Annoyed at the disturbance, he growled with a choking voice,
+with head buried in the hair of the young girl:
+
+“Begone, you low brutes, and do not trouble a philosopher’s pastime.”
+
+After a few minutes, a centurion who was passing along the now deserted
+road, raised Stephanas from the ground, made him swallow a mouthful of
+wine, and gave him linen wherewith to bandage his wounds.
+
+While this was going on, Gallio, sitting with his friends under Medea’s
+tree, was saying:
+
+“If you wish to know the successor of the master of gods and men,
+meditate the words of the poet:
+
+    “‘Jove’s spouse shall bring forth a son more powerful than
+    his father.’
+
+“This line designates, not the august Juno, but the most illustrious
+among the noble women with whom consorted the Olympian who so often
+changed his form and his loves. It seems to me assured that the
+government of the universe is to fall to the lot of Hercules. This
+opinion has long since taken root in my mind, by reasons derived not
+only from the poets, but from philosophers and men of science. I have,
+so to speak, greeted by anticipation the accession of the son of
+Alcmene, in the climax of my tragedy of _Hercules on Œta_, ending with
+the following words:
+
+    “‘Hail, great conqueror of monsters, and pacifier of the world;
+    be propitious unto us! Cast thy gaze upon the earth, and if
+    some monster of a new kind strike terror into mankind, destroy
+    it with a thunderbolt. Better than thy father wilt thou know
+    how to hurl thunder.’
+
+“I augur favourably of the coming reign of Hercules. During his life
+upon earth, he displayed a spirit patient and inclined to elevated
+thoughts. When the time comes for thunder to arm his hand, he will not
+suffer a new Caius to govern the Empire with impunity. Virtue, ancient
+simplicity, courage, innocence, and peace will reign with him. Thus do
+I prophesy.”
+
+And Gallio, having risen, took leave of his friends with these words:
+
+“Fare ye well, and love me.”
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+As Nicole Langelier came to the end of his reading, the birds heralded
+by Giacomo Boni filled the deserted Forum with their friendly cries.
+
+The sky was spreading over the Roman ruins the ash-tinted veil of
+evening; the young laurel-bushes planted along the Via Sacra lifted up
+into the diaphanous atmosphere their branches black as antique bronzes,
+while the flanks of the Palatine were clothed in azure.
+
+“Langelier,” spoke M. Goubin, who was not easily deceived, “you did
+not invent that story. The suit brought by Sosthenes against St. Paul
+before Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, is to be found in the _Acts of the
+Apostles_.”
+
+Nichole Langelier readily admitted the fact.
+
+“The story is told,” he said, “in chapter xviii., and occupies verses
+12 to 17 inclusively, which I am able to read to you, for I copied them
+on to a sheet of my manuscript.”
+
+Whereupon he read:
+
+    “‘12. And when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made
+    insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to
+    the judgment seat,
+
+    “‘13. Saying, This _fellow_ persuadeth men to worship God
+    contrary to the law.
+
+    “‘14. And when Paul was now about to open _his_ mouth, Gallio
+    said unto the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked
+    lewdness, O _ye_ Jews, reason would that I should bear with you:
+
+    “‘15. But if it be a question of words and names, and _of_ your
+    law, look ye _to it_; for I will be no judge of such _matters_.
+
+    “‘16. And he drove them from the judgment seat.
+
+    “‘17. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of
+    the synagogue, and beat _him_ before the judgment seat. And
+    Gallio cared for none of those things.’
+
+“I have not invented anything,” added Langelier. “Little is known of
+Annæus Mela, and of Gallio, his brother. It is, however, certain that
+they were numbered among the most intelligent men of their day. When
+Achaia, a senatorial province under Augustus, an imperial one under
+Tiberius, was restored to the Senate by Claudius, Gallio was sent
+thither as proconsul. He was doubtless indebted for the post to the
+influence of his brother Seneca; it is possible, however, that he was
+selected for his knowledge of Greek literature, and as a man agreeable
+to the Athenian professors, whose intellects the Romans admired. He
+was highly educated. He had written a book on physiological subjects,
+and, it is believed, some few tragedies. His works are all lost, unless
+something from his pen is to be met with in the collection of tragic
+recitations attributed without sufficient reasons to his brother the
+philosopher. I have assumed that he was a Stoic, and that he held in
+many respects the same opinions as his illustrious brother. But, while
+placing in his mouth words of virtue and rectitude, I have guarded
+against attributing any settled doctrine to him. The Romans of those
+days blended the ideas of Epicurus with those of Zenon. I was not
+incurring any great risk of being mistaken, when investing Gallio with
+this eclecticism. I have represented him as a kindly man. He was that,
+assuredly. Seneca has said of him that no one loved him in a lukewarm
+fashion. His gentleness was universal. He aspired to honours.
+
+“Quite the contrary, his brother Annæus Mela held aloof from them. We
+have on that point the testimony of Seneca the philosopher, as well as
+that of Tacitus. When Helvia, the mother of the three Senecas, lost
+her husband, the most famed of her sons indited a small philosophical
+treatise for her. In a certain part of this work, he exhorts her to
+consider, in order to reconcile her to life, that there remain unto
+her sons like Gallio and Mela, differing as to character, but equally
+worthy of her affection.
+
+“‘Cast thine eyes upon my brothers,’ he says, or words to that effect.
+‘Both shall, by the diversity of their virtues, charm thy weary
+moments. Gallio has attained honours through his talents. Mela has
+despised them in his wisdom. Derive enjoyment from the regard in which
+the one is held, from the calm of the other, and from the love of both.
+I know the inner sentiments of my brothers. Gallio seeks in dignities
+an ornament for thyself. Mela embraces a gentle and peaceful life in
+order to devote himself to thee.’
+
+“A child during the principality of Nero, Tacitus did not know the
+Senecas. He merely collected what was currently said about them in his
+day. He states that if Mela held aloof from honours, it was through
+a refinement of ambition, and, a simple Roman knight, to rival the
+influence of the consular officers. After having administered in person
+the vast estates he possessed in Boetica, Mela came to Rome, and had
+himself appointed administrator of Nero’s estate. The conclusion was
+drawn therefrom that he was shrewd in matters of business, and he was
+even suspected of not being as disinterested as he wished to appear.
+That may be. The Senecas, while parading their contempt for riches,
+were possessed of great wealth, and it is very hard to believe the
+tutor of Nero when, amid the luxury of his furniture and his gardens,
+he represents himself as faithful to his beloved poverty. Still, the
+three sons of Helvia were not ordinary souls. Mela had of Atilla,
+his wife, a son, Lucan the poet. It would seem that Lucan’s talent
+reflected great lustre on his father’s name. Letters were then held in
+high honour, and eloquence and poetry ranked above all things.
+
+“Seneca, Mela, Lucan, and Gallio perished with the accomplices of
+Piso. Seneca the philosopher was already an aged man. Tacitus, who
+had not been a witness of his death, has portrayed the scene for us.
+We know how Nero’s tutor opened his veins while in his bath, and how
+his young wife Paulina protested that she would die with him, and by
+a similar death. By Nero’s order, Paulina’s wrists, which had been
+opened at the veins, were bandaged. She lived, preserving thereafter a
+deathly pallor. Tacitus records that young Lucan, whilst under torture,
+denounced his mother. Even if there were confirmation of this infamous
+deed, the blame for it should be laid to the tortures he underwent.
+But there is certainly one reason for not believing it. If indeed pain
+extorted from Lucan the names of several of the conspirators, he did
+not pronounce that of Atilla, since Atilla was not molested at a time
+when every information was blindly credited.
+
+“After the death of Lucan, Mela, with too great a haste and diligence,
+seized on the inheritance of his son. A friend of the young poet, who
+doubtless coveted the inheritance, became the accuser of Mela. It was
+alleged that the father had been initiated into the secret of the
+conspiracy, and a forged letter of Lucan was brought forth. Nero, after
+having read it, ordered it to be shown to Mela. Following the example
+set by his brother and so many of Nero’s victims, Mela caused his veins
+to be opened, after having bequeathed a large sum of money to the
+freedmen of Cæsar, in order to secure the remainder of his fortunes to
+the unhappy Atilla. Gallio did not survive his two brothers; he took
+his own life.
+
+“Such was the tragic end of these charming and cultured men. I have
+made two of them, Gallio and Mela, speak in Corinth. Mela was a great
+traveller. His son Lucan, while yet a child, was on a visit to Athens,
+at the time Gallio was proconsul of Achaia. There is therefore some
+show of reason for saying that Mela was then with his brother in
+Corinth. I have supposed that two young Romans of illustrious birth,
+and a philosopher of the Areopagus, accompanied the proconsul. In so
+doing, I have not taken too great a liberty, since the intendants, the
+procurators, the proprætors, and the proconsuls whom the Emperor and
+the Senate respectively sent to govern the provinces, always had about
+themselves the sons of great families, who came to instruct themselves
+in the management of public affairs under their guidance, and that of
+men of keen intellect like my Apollodorus, more frequently freedmen
+acting as their secretaries. Lastly, I conceived the idea that at
+the moment St. Paul was being brought before a Roman tribunal, the
+proconsul and his friends were conversing freely about the most varied
+subjects, art, philosophy, religion, and politics, and that there
+pierced the various topics absorbing their interest a deep anxiety as
+to the future. There is indeed some likelihood that on that very day,
+just as well as on any other, they may have sought to discover the
+future destiny of Rome and the world. Gallio and Mela stood among the
+most elevated and open intellects of the day. Minds of such a calibre
+are at all times inclined to delve into the present and the past for
+the conditions of the future. I have noticed in the most learned and
+well-informed men whom I have known, to name but Renan and Berthelot,
+a pronounced tendency to interject at haphazard into a conversation
+outlines of rational utopias and scientific forecasts.”
+
+“Here then we have,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “one of the best educated
+men of his day, a man versed in philosophic speculation, trained in
+the conduct of public affairs, and who was of as open and broad a mind
+as could be that of a Roman such as Gallio, the brother of Seneca, the
+ornament and light of his century. He is concerned about the future,
+he seeks to grasp the movement which is most affecting the world, and
+he tries to fathom the destiny of the Empire and the gods. Just then,
+by a unique stroke of fortune, he comes across St. Paul; the future
+he is in quest of passes by him, and he sees it not. What an example
+of the blindness which strikes, in the very presence of an unexpected
+revelation, the most enlightened minds and the keenest intellects!”
+
+“I would have you observe, my dear friend,” replied Nicole Langelier,
+“that it was not a very easy matter for Gallio to converse with St.
+Paul. It is not easy to conceive how they could possibly have exchanged
+ideas. St. Paul had trouble in expressing himself, and it was with
+great difficulty that he made himself intelligible to the folk who
+lived and thought like himself. He had never spoken word of mouth to
+any cultured man.
+
+“He was nowise capable of indicating a train of thought and of
+following those of an interlocutor. He was ignorant of Greek science.
+Gallio, accustomed to the conversation of educated people, had long
+since trained his reason to debate. He knew not the maxims of the
+rabbis. What then could these two men have said to each other?
+
+“Not that it was impossible for a Jew to converse with a Roman. The
+Herods enjoyed a mode of expression which was agreeable to Tiberius
+and Caligula. Flavius Josephus and Queen Berenice discoursed in terms
+pleasing to Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem. We know that bejewelled
+Jews were at all times to be found in company of the antisemites. They
+were _meschoumets_ (accursed unbelievers--anathema to Paul). Paul was
+a _nĕbi_ (prophet). This fiery and haughty Syrian, disdainful of the
+worldly goods sought for by all men, thirsting after poverty, ambitious
+of insults and humiliations, rejoicing in suffering, was merely able to
+proclaim his sombre and inflamed visions, his hatred of life and of the
+beautiful, his absurd outbursts of anger, and his insane charity. Apart
+from this, he had nothing to say. In truth, I can discover one subject
+only on which he might have agreed with the proconsul of Achaia. ’Tis
+Nero.
+
+“St. Paul, at that time, could hardly have heard any mention of the
+youthful son of Agrippina, but on learning that Nero was destined to
+Imperial power, he would immediately become a Neronian. He became so
+later on. He was still one at the time Nero poisoned Britannicus. Not
+that he was capable of approving of a brother’s murder, but because he
+entertained a profound respect for all government. ‘Let every soul be
+subject unto the higher powers,’ he wrote to his churches. ‘For rulers
+are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not
+be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have
+praise of the same.’ Gallio might perchance have found these maxims
+somewhat simple and commonplace, but he could not have disapproved of
+them as a whole. But if there is a subject which he would not have felt
+tempted to approach while speaking with a Jewish weaver, it is indeed
+the ruling of people and the authority of the Emperor. Once more, what
+could those two men well have said to each other?
+
+“In our own day, when a European official in Africa, let us say the
+Governor-General of the Sudan for his Britannic Majesty, or our
+Governor of Algeria, comes across a fakeer or a marabout, their
+conversation is naturally confined within restricted limits. St. Paul
+was to a proconsul what a marabout is to our civil Governor of Algeria.
+A conversation between Gallio and St. Paul would have resembled only
+too much, I imagine, that held by General Desaix with his famous
+dervish. After the battle of the Pyramids, General Desaix, at the head
+of twelve hundred cavalry, pursued into Upper Egypt the Mamelukes of
+Murad Bey. On arriving at Girgeh, he heard that an old dervish, who had
+acquired among the Arabs a wide reputation for learning and sanctity,
+was living near that city. Desaix was endowed with both philosophy and
+humanity. Desirous of making the acquaintance of a man esteemed of his
+fellows, he caused the dervish to be summoned to headquarters, received
+him with honour, and entered into conversation with him through an
+interpreter.
+
+“‘Venerable old man,’ he said, ‘the French have come to bring Egypt
+justice and liberty.’
+
+“‘I knew they would come,’ replied the dervish.
+
+“‘How did you come to know it?’
+
+“‘Through an eclipse of the sun.’
+
+“‘How can an eclipse of the sun have informed you as to the movement of
+our armies?’
+
+“‘Eclipses are brought about by the angel Gabriel, who places himself
+before the sun in order to announce to the faithful the misfortunes
+which threaten them.’
+
+“‘Venerable old man, you are ignorant of the true cause of eclipses; I
+shall impart the knowledge of it to you.’
+
+“Thereupon, taking a stump of pencil and a scrap of paper, he traced
+some figures:
+
+“‘Let A be the sun, B, the moon, C, the earth,’ and so forth...
+
+“And when he had come to the end of his demonstration,
+
+“‘Such,’ he said, ‘is the theory governing eclipses of the sun.’
+
+“And as the dervish was mumbling a few words,
+
+“‘What does he say?’ asked the General of the interpreter.
+
+“‘General, he says that it is the angel Gabriel who causes eclipses, by
+placing himself in front of the sun.’
+
+“‘The fellow is simply naught but a fanatic!’ exclaimed Desaix.
+
+“Whereupon he drove the dervish out with well-administered kicks.
+
+“I imagine that had a conversation been entered into between St. Paul
+and Gallio, it would have ended somewhat as did the dialogue between
+the dervish and General Desaix.”
+
+“It must, however, be pointed out,” said Joséphin Leclerc, joining
+issue, “that between the Apostle Paul and the dervish of General
+Desaix, there is at the very least this difference: the dervish did
+not impose his faith on Europe. And you will admit that his Britannic
+Majesty’s honourable Governor of the Sudan has doubtless not come
+across the marabout who is to confer his name on the biggest church
+in London; you must likewise admit that our civil Governor of Algeria
+has never come face to face with the founder of a religion which the
+majority of the French nation will some day believe and profess. These
+functionaries have not seen the future arise before them under a human
+form. The proconsul of Achaia did.”
+
+“It was none the less impossible for Gallio,” replied Langelier, “to
+carry on with St. Paul a steady conversation on some important subject
+regarding morals or philosophy. I am well aware, and you yourselves
+are not ignorant of the fact, that towards the fifth century of the
+Christian Era, it was believed that Seneca had known St. Paul in
+Rome, and had expressed admiration of the Apostle’s doctrines. This
+fable owed its spread to the deplorable clouding of the human mind
+following so closely upon the age of Tacitus and of Trajan. In order
+to obtain credence for it, certain forgerers, who at that time swarmed
+in Christian ranks, fabricated a correspondence which is mentioned
+respectfully by St. Jerome and St. Augustine. If these letters are
+those which have come unto us ascribed to Paul and Seneca, it must
+be that those two Fathers did not read them, or that they greatly
+lacked discernment. It is the absurd work of a Christian utterly
+ignorant of everything connected with Nero’s time, and one totally
+incapable of imitating Seneca’s style. Is it necessary to say that the
+great divines of the Middle Ages firmly believed in the truth of the
+intercourse between the two men and in the genuineness of the letters?
+But the classical scholars of the Renaissance had no difficulty in
+demonstrating the unlikelihood and the falsity of these inventions. It
+matters little that Joseph de Maistre should have garnered by the way
+this antiquated rubbish together with much of the same kind. No one any
+longer heeds it, and henceforth it is only in pretty novels written
+for society by skilful and mystical authors that the apostles of the
+primitive Church converse freely with the philosophers and people of
+fashion of Imperial Rome and expound to the delight of Petronius the
+novel beauties of Christianity. The words of Gallio and his friends,
+which you have just heard, are endowed with less charm and more truth.”
+
+“I do not deny it,” replied Joséphin Leclerc, “and I believe that the
+personages of the dialogue are made to think and speak as they must
+actually have thought and spoken, and that the ideas entertained by
+them are those of their day. Therein, it seems to me, lies the merit of
+the work, and therefore do I reason about it just as if I were basing
+my arguments on a historical text.”
+
+“You may safely do so,” said Langelier. “I have not embodied in it
+anything for which I have not the authority of a reference.”
+
+“Very well then,” resumed Joséphin Leclerc, “so we have been
+listening to a Greek philosopher and several Roman literati engaged
+in speculation as to the future destinies of their fatherland, of
+humanity, and of the earth, and seeking to discover the name of Jove’s
+successor. The while they are absorbed in this perplexing quest, the
+apostle of the new god appears before them, and they treat him with
+contempt. I maintain that in so doing they plainly show a lack of
+penetration, and lose through their own fault a unique opportunity of
+becoming instructed concerning that which they felt so great a desire
+to know.”
+
+“It seems self-evident to you, my good friend,” replied Nicole
+Langelier, “that Gallio, had he known how to set about it, would have
+gathered from St. Paul the secret of the future. Such is perhaps the
+first idea that springs to the mind, and it is one that many have
+become imbued with. Renan, after having recorded, according to the
+_Acts_, this singular interview between Gallio and St. Paul, is not
+averse from discovering evidence of a narrow and thoughtless mind in
+the contempt experienced by the proconsul for this Jew of Tarsus who
+appeared before his tribunal. He seizes the opportunity thus offered to
+lament the poor philosophy of the Romans. ‘What a lack of foresight,’
+he exclaims, ‘is sometimes exhibited by intellectual men! In later
+times, it was to be discovered that the squabble between those abject
+sectarians was the great event of the century.’ Renan seems to believe
+that the proconsul of Achaia had merely to listen to that weaver in
+order to be there and then informed of the spiritual revolution in
+course of preparation throughout the universe, and to penetrate the
+secret of future humanity. And this is also no doubt what every one
+thinks at first sight. Nevertheless, ere settling the point, let
+us look more closely into the matter; let us examine what both men
+expected, and let us find out which of the two was, when all is said
+and done, the better prophet.
+
+“In the first place, Gallio believed that the youthful Nero would be
+an emperor of philosophic mind, govern according to the maxims of the
+Portico, and be the delight of the human race. He was mistaken, and
+the reasons for his erroneous assumption are only too patent. His
+brother Seneca was the tutor of the son of Agrippina; his nephew, the
+boy Lucan, lived on terms of intimacy with the young prince. Both
+his family and his personal interests bound up the proconsul with
+the fortunes of Nero. He believed that Nero would make an excellent
+Emperor, for the wish was father to the thought. His mistake arose
+rather from weakness of character than from lack of intellect. Nero,
+moreover, was then a youth full of gentleness, and the early years
+of his principality were not to give the lie to the hopes of the
+philosophers. Secondly, Gallio believed that peace would reign over
+the world after the chastisement of the Parthians. He erred owing to a
+lack of knowledge of the actual dimensions of the earth. He erroneously
+believed that the _orbis Romanus_ covered the whole of the globe; that
+the inhabitable world ended at the burning or frozen strands, rivers,
+mountains, sands, and deserts reached by the Roman eagles, and that the
+Germani and Parthians peopled the confines of the universe. We know
+how much weeping and blood this error, shared in common by all Romans,
+cost the Empire. Thirdly, Gallio, pinning his faith to the oracles,
+believed in the eternity of Rome. He was mistaken, if his prediction
+is to be taken in a narrow and literal sense. But he was not so, if
+one considers that Rome, the Rome of Cæsar and Trajan, has bequeathed
+us its customs and laws, and that modern civilisation proceeds from
+Roman civilisation. It is in the august square where we now stand that
+from the height of the rostral tribune and in the Curia was debated
+the fate of the universe, and the form of constitution which to the
+present day governs the nations. Our science is based on Greek science
+transmitted to us by Rome. The reawakening of ancient thought in the
+fifteenth century in Italy, in the sixteenth century in France and
+Germany, was the cause of Europe being born anew in science and in
+reason. The proconsul of Achaia did not deceive himself: Rome is not
+defunct, since she lives in us. Let us, in the fourth place, examine
+Gallio’s philosophical ideas. No doubt he was not equipped with a very
+sound natural philosophy, and he did not always interpret natural
+phenomena with sufficient precision. He applied himself to metaphysics
+as a Roman, _i.e._, with a lack of acuteness. At heart, he valued
+philosophy merely because of its utility, and devoted himself mainly
+to moral questions. I have neither betrayed nor flattered him when
+placing his speeches on record. I have represented him as serious and
+mediocre, and a fairly good disciple of Cicero. You may have gathered
+that he reconciled, by dint of the poorest of reasoning, the doctrine
+of the Stoics to the national religion. One feels that whenever he
+indulges in speculation as to the nature of the gods, he is anxious to
+remain a good citizen and an honest official. But, after all, he thinks
+matters out, and reasons. The idea he conceives of the forces which
+govern the world is, in its principle, rational and scientific and, in
+this respect, it conforms to that which we have ourselves conceived of
+them. He does not reason as well as his friend the Greek Apollodorus.
+He does not argue any worse than the professors of our University who
+teach an independent philosophy and a Christian antimaterialism. By
+his open-mindedness and his strength of intelligence, he seems our
+contemporary. His thoughts turn naturally in the direction followed by
+the human mind at the present moment. Do not therefore let us say that
+he was unable to recognise the intellectual future of humanity.
+
+“As to St. Paul, he announced the future; none doubt the fact. And yet
+he expected to see with his own eyes the world come to an end, and all
+things existing engulfed in flames. This conflagration of the universe,
+which Gallio and the Stoics foresaw in a future so remote that they
+none the less announced the eternity of the Empire, Paul believed to
+be quite close at hand, and was preparing for that great day. Herein
+he was mistaken, and you will admit that this misconception is in
+itself worse than all the united blunders of Gallio and his friends.
+Still more serious is it that Paul did not base this extraordinary
+belief on any observation or any reasoning whatever. He was ignorant
+of and despised science. He gave himself up to the lowest practices of
+thaumaturgy and glossology, and had no culture whatsoever.
+
+“As a matter of fact, in regard to the future, as well as to the
+present and the past, there was nothing the proconsul could learn
+from the apostle, nothing but a mere name. Had he learnt that Paul was
+of Christ’s religion, he would not have been any the better informed
+as to the future of Christianity, which was within a few years to
+disengage itself almost wholly from the ideas of Paul and of the first
+apostolic men. Thus it will be seen, if one does not pin one’s opinion
+to liturgical texts, and to the strictly verbal interpretations of
+theologians, that St. Paul foresaw the future less accurately than
+Gallio, and one will be inclined to think that were the apostle to
+return to Rome nowadays, he would discover more cause for surprise than
+the proconsul.
+
+“St. Paul, in modern Rome, would no more recognise himself on the
+column of Marcus Aurelius than he would recognise on the column of
+Trajan his old enemy Cephas. The dome of St. Peter’s, the Stanze of
+the Vatican, the splendour of the churches, and the Papal pomp, all
+would offend his blinking eyes. In vain would he look for disciples in
+London, Paris, or Geneva. He would not understand either Catholics or
+Reformers who vie in quoting his real or supposed Epistles. Nor would
+he understand the minds freed from all dogma, who base their opinion
+on the two forces he hated and despised the most: science and reason.
+On discovering that the Son of Man has not come, he would rend his
+garments, and cover himself with ashes.”
+
+Hippolyte Dufresne interrupted, saying:
+
+“Whether in Paris or in Rome, there is no doubt that St. Paul would be
+as an owl blinking in the sun. He would be no more fit than a Bedouin
+of the desert to communicate with cultured Europeans. He would not know
+himself when at a bishop’s, nor would he obtain recognition from him.
+Were he to alight at the house of a Swiss pastor fed upon his writings,
+he would astound him with the primitive crudity of his Christianity.
+All this is true. Bear in mind, however, that he was a Semite, a
+foreigner to Latin thought, to the genius of the Germani and Saxons, to
+the races from which sprung those theologians who, by dint of erroneous
+conceptions, mistranslations, and absurdities, discovered a meaning in
+his counterfeit Epistles. You conceive him in a world which was not his
+own, which can in no wise become his, and this absurd conception at
+once gives birth to an agglomeration of incongruous presentments. We
+picture to ourselves, to illustrate what I say, this vagabond weaver
+sitting in a Cardinal’s coach, and we make merry over the appearance
+presented by two human beings of so opposite a character. If you
+persist in resurrecting St. Paul, pray have the good taste to restore
+him to his race and country, among the Semites of the East, who have
+not greatly changed these twenty centuries, and for whom the Bible and
+the Talmud contain human science in its entirety. Drop him among the
+Jews of Damascus or of Jerusalem. Lead him to the Synagogue. There
+he will listen without astonishment to the teachings of his master,
+Gamaliel. He will enter into disputation with the rabbis, will weave
+goat-hair, live on dates and a little rice, observe the law faithfully,
+and of a sudden undertake to destroy it. He will in turn be persecutor
+and persecuted, executioner and martyr, all with equal keenness. The
+Jews of the Synagogue will proceed with his excommunication, by blowing
+into a ram’s horn, and by spilling drop by drop the wax of black
+candles into a tub containing blood. He will endure without flinching
+this horrible ceremony, and will exercise, in the course of an arduous
+and continually menaced existence, the energy of a headstrong will. In
+such circumstances, he will probably be known to only a few ignorant
+and sordid Jews. But it will be Paul once more, and wholly Paul.”
+
+“That may be possible,” said Joséphin Leclerc. “Yet you will grant me
+that St. Paul was one of the principal founders of Christianity, and
+that he might have imparted to Gallio valuable information concerning
+the great religious movement of which the proconsul was entirely
+ignorant.”
+
+“He who founds a religion,” replied Langelier, “wots not what he
+does. I may say almost the same of those who found great human
+institutions, monastic orders, insurance companies, national guards,
+banks, trusts, trade unions, academies, schools of music and the
+drama, gymnastic societies, soup-kitchens, and lectures. Generally
+speaking, these establishments do not for any length of time carry
+out the intentions of their founders, and it sometimes happens that
+they become diametrically opposed to them. It is as much as one can
+do to trace after many long years a few vestiges of their founders’
+original intention. In the matter of religions, at any rate among
+nations whose existence is troublous and whose mind is fickle, they
+undergo so incessant and so complete a transformation, according to
+the feelings or interests of their faithful and their ministers, that
+in the course of a few years they preserve naught of the spirit which
+created them. Gods undergo more changes than men, for the reason that
+their form is less precise and that they endure longer. Some there are
+who improve as they grow older; others deteriorate with the years. It
+takes less than a century for a god to become unrecognisable. The god
+of the Christians has perhaps undergone a more complete transformation
+than any other. This is doubtless attributable to the fact that he has
+belonged in succession to the most varied civilisations and races, to
+the Latins, to the Greeks, to the Barbarians, and to all the nations
+sprung from the ruins of the Roman Empire. It is assuredly a far cry
+from the wooden Apollo of Dædalus to the classical Apollo Belvedere.
+Still greater a distance separates the youthful Christ of the Catacombs
+from the ascetic Christ of our cathedrals. This personage of the
+Christian mythology perplexes one by the number and variety of his
+metamorphoses. The flamboyant Christ of St. Paul is followed, as early
+as the second century, by the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels, a poor
+Jew, vaguely communistic, who becomes, with the Fourth Gospel, a sort
+of young Alexandrine, a milk-and-water disciple of the Gnostics. At
+a later period, if we only take into account the Roman Christs and
+tarry merely with the most famed of them, we have had the dominating
+Christ of Gregory VII., the bloodthirsty Christ of St. Dominic, the
+mob-leading Christ of Julius II., the atheistic and artistic Christ of
+Leo X., the indeterminate and insipid Christ of the Jesuits, Christ the
+protector of the factory, the defender of capital and the opponent of
+Socialism, who flourished under the pontificate of Leo XIII., and who
+still reigns. All those Christs, who have but the name in common, were
+not foreseen by Paul. In reality, he knew no more than Gallio about the
+future god.”
+
+“You exaggerate,” remarked M. Goubin, who disliked exaggeration in
+whatever form.
+
+Giacomo Boni, who venerates the sacred books of all nations, here
+pointed out that Gallio and the Roman philosophers and historians were
+to be blamed for not having a knowledge of the Jews’ Sacred Scriptures.
+
+“Had they been better informed,” he said, “the Romans would not have
+harboured unjust prejudices against the religion of Israel; and, as
+your own Renan has said, a little goodwill and a better knowledge
+would perhaps have warded off fearful misunderstandings in regard
+to questions of interest to the whole of humanity. There lacked not
+educated Jews like Philo to explain the laws of Moses to the Romans,
+had the latter been more broad-minded and possessed a more correct
+presentiment of the future. The Romans experienced disgust and fear,
+when face to face with Asiatic thought. Even if they were right in
+fearing it, they were wrong in despising it. To despise a danger
+constitutes a great blunder. Gallio displayed want of foresight when
+stigmatising as criminal fancies and profanities of the vulgar the
+Syrian beliefs.”
+
+“How then could the Hellenist Jews have taught the Romans what they
+were themselves ignorant of?” inquired Langelier. “How could that
+honest Philo, so learned yet so shallow, have revealed to them the
+obscure, confused, and fecund thought of Israel, of which he knew
+nothing himself? What could he have imparted to Gallio concerning the
+faith of the Jews except literary absurdities? He would have explained
+to him that the doctrine of Moses harmonises with the philosophy of
+Plato. Then, as always, cultured men had no idea of what was passing
+through the minds of the multitudes. The ignorant mob is for ever
+creating gods unknown to the literati.
+
+“One of the strangest and most notable facts of history is the conquest
+of the world by the god of a Syrian tribe, and the victory of Jehovah
+over all the gods of Rome, Greece, Asia, and Egypt. Upon the whole,
+Jesus was simply a _nĕbi_, and the last of the prophets of Israel.
+Nothing is known about him. We are in the dark as to his life and
+death, for the Evangelists are in nowise biographers. As to the moral
+ideas grouped under his name, they originate in truth with the crowd of
+visionaries who prophesied in the days of the Herods.
+
+“What is called the triumph of Christianity is more accurately the
+triumph of Judaism, and to Israel fell the singular privilege of giving
+a god to the world. It must be admitted that Jehovah deserved his
+sudden elevation in many respects. He was, when he attained to empire,
+the best of the gods. He had made a very bad beginning. Of him it may
+be said what historians say of Augustus, his heart softened with the
+years. At the time when the Israelites settled in the Promised Land,
+Jehovah was stupid, ferocious, ignorant, cruel, coarse, foul-mouthed,
+indeed the most silly and most cruel of gods. But, under the influence
+of the prophets, there came about a complete transformation. He ceased
+being conservative and formal, and became converted to ideas of peace
+and to dreams of justice. His people were wretched. He began to feel a
+profound pity for all poor wretches. And although he remained at heart
+very much a Jew and very patriotic, he naturally became international
+when becoming revolutionary. He constituted himself the defender of
+the humble and oppressed. He conceived one of those simple ideas
+which captivate the world. He announced universal happiness, and the
+coming of a beneficent Messiah whose reign would be peace. His prophet
+Isaiah prompted him as to this admirable theme with words delightfully
+poetical and of unsurpassed softness:
+
+“‘The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of
+the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations
+shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye and let
+us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;
+and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for
+out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from
+Jerusalem. And he shall judge among nations, and shall rebuke many
+people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
+spears into pruning-hooks.
+
+“‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie
+down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling
+together; and a little child shall lead them.’
+
+“In the Roman Empire, the god of the Jews set himself to capture the
+working classes and the social revolution. He addressed himself to the
+unfortunate. Now, in the days of Tiberius and Claudius, there existed
+within the Empire infinitely more unhappy than happy ones. There were
+hordes of slaves. One man alone owned as many as ten thousand. These
+slaves were for the most part sunk in wretchedness. Neither Jupiter,
+nor Juno, nor the Dioscuri troubled themselves about them. The Latin
+gods did not pity their condition. They were the gods of their masters.
+When came from Judæa a god who hearkened to the complaints of the
+humble, they worshipped him. So it is that the religion of Israel
+became the religion of the Roman world. This is what neither St. Paul
+nor Philo could explain to the proconsul of Achaia, for they themselves
+did not see it clearly. And this is what Gallio could not realise.
+He felt, however, that the reign of Jupiter was nearing its end, and
+he predicted the coming of a better god. From love of the national
+antiquities, he went for this god to the Græco-Latin Olympus, and
+selected him of the blood of Jupiter, through aristocratic feeling.
+Thus it is that he chose Hercules instead of Jehovah.”
+
+“For once,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “you will admit that Gallio was
+mistaken.”
+
+“Less so than you think,” replied Langelier with a smile. “Jehovah
+or Hercules, it mattered little. You may be sure of this: the son of
+Alcmene would not have governed the world otherwise than the father of
+Jesus. Olympian as he might be, he would have had to become the god of
+the slaves, and assume the religious spirit of the new times. The gods
+conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have
+reasons for so doing. Pay attention to this. The spirit which favoured
+the accession in Rome of the god of Israel was not merely the spirit of
+the masses, but also that of the philosophers. At that time, they were
+nearly all Stoics, and believed in one god alone, one on whose behalf
+Plato had laboured and one unconnected by tie of family or friendship
+with the gods of human form of Greece and Rome. This god, through his
+infinity, resembled the god of the Jews. Seneca and Epictetus, who
+venerated him, would have been the first to have been surprised at
+the resemblance, had they been called upon to institute a comparison.
+Nevertheless, they had themselves greatly contributed towards rendering
+acceptable the austere monotheism of the Judæo-Christians. Doubtless
+a wide gulf separated Stoic haughtiness from Christian humility, but
+Seneca’s morals, consequent upon his sadness and his contempt of
+nature, were paving the way for the Evangelical morals. The Stoics had
+joined issue with life and the beautiful; this rupture, attributed to
+Christianity, was initiated by the philosophers. A couple of centuries
+later, in the time of Constantine, both pagans and Christians will
+have, so to speak, the same morals and philosophy. The Emperor Julian,
+who restored to the Empire its old religion, which had been abolished
+by Constantine the Apostate, is justly regarded as an opponent of
+the Galilean. And, when perusing the petty treatises of Julian, one
+is struck with the number of ideas this enemy of the Christians held
+in common with them. He, like them, is a monotheist; with them, he
+believes in the merits of abstinence, fasting, and mortification of
+the flesh; with them, he despises carnal pleasures, and considers he
+will rise in favour with the gods by avoiding women; finally, he pushes
+Christian sentiment to the degree of rejoicing over his dirty beard and
+his black finger-nails. The Emperor Julian’s morals were almost those
+of St. Gregory Nazianzen. There is nothing in this but what is natural
+and usual. The transformations undergone by morals and ideas are never
+sudden. The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly,
+and are only seen from afar. Christianity did not secure a foothold
+until such time as the condition of morals accommodated itself to it,
+and as Christianity itself had become adjusted to the condition of
+morals. It was unable to substitute itself for paganism until such time
+as paganism came to resemble it, and itself came to resemble paganism.”
+
+“Granted,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that neither St. Paul nor Gallio saw
+into the future. No one does. Has not one of your friends said: ‘The
+future is concealed even from those who shape it’?”
+
+“Our knowledge of what the future has in store,” resumed Langelier,
+“is in proportion of our acquaintance with the present and the past.
+Science is prophetic. The more a science is accurate, the more can
+accurate prophesies be drawn from it. Mathematics, to which alone
+appertains entire accuracy, communicate a portion of their precision to
+the sciences proceeding from them. Thus it is that accurate predictions
+are made by means of mathematical astronomy and chemistry. One is
+able to calculate eclipses millions of years ahead, without fear of
+one’s calculations being found erroneous, as long as the sun, the
+moon, and the earth shall preserve the same relations as to bulk and
+distance. It is even permitted to us to foresee that these relations
+will be modified in a far distant future. Indeed, it is prophesied,
+on the strength of the celestial mechanism, that the silver hornéd
+moon will not describe eternally the same circle round our globe, and
+that causes now in operation will, by dint of repetition, change its
+course. You may safely predict that the sun will become darkened, and
+will no longer appear except a shrunken globe over our icy seas, unless
+there should come to it in the interval some new alimentation, a thing
+quite within the possibilities, for the sun is capable of catching
+swarms of asteroids, just as a spider does flies. It is, however, safe
+to predict that it will become extinguished, and that the dislocated
+figures of the constellations will vanish star by star in the darkness
+of space. But what does the death of a star amount to? To the fading
+away of a spark. Let all the stars in the heavens die out just as
+the grasses of the field wither, what matters it to universal life,
+so long as the infinitely tiny elements composing them shall have
+retained within themselves the force which makes and unmakes worlds?
+It is safe to predict an even more complete end of the universe, the
+end of the atom, the dissociation of the last elements of matter, the
+times when protyle, when the amorphous fog will have reconquered its
+illimitable empire over the ruins of all things. And this will form but
+a breathing-spell in God’s respiration. All will begin anew.
+
+“The worlds will again be born to life. They will live again to die.
+Life and death will succeed each other for all eternity. All sorts of
+combinations will become facts in the infinity of space and time, and
+we shall find ourselves seated once more on the flank of the Forum in
+ruins. But as we shall not know that we are ourselves, it will not be
+us.”
+
+M. Goubin wiped his eye-glass.
+
+“Such ideas are disheartening,” he remarked.
+
+“What then do you hope for, Monsieur Goubin,” asked Nicole Langelier,
+“to gratify your wishes? Do you aspire to preserve of yourself and of
+the world an eternal consciousness? Why do you wish to remember for all
+time that you are Monsieur Goubin? I will not conceal it from you: the
+present universe, which is far from nearing its end, does not seem to
+possess the property of satisfying you in this respect. Do not place
+any more store in those which are to follow, for they will doubtless
+be of the same kind. Do not, however, abandon all hope. It is possible
+that after an indefinite succession of universes, you shall be born
+anew, Monsieur Goubin, with a recollection of your previous existences.
+Renan has said that it was a risk to be taken, and that at all events
+it would not be long in coming. The successions of universe will take
+place for us within less than a second. Time does not count for the
+dead.”
+
+“Are you cognisant,” asked Hippolyte Dufresne, “of the
+astronomical dreams of Blanqui? The aged Blanqui, a prisoner in the
+Mont-Saint-Michel, could get but a glimpse of the sky through his
+stopped-up window, and had the stars for his only neighbours. This
+made of him an astronomer, and he based on the unity of matter and
+the laws ruling it a strange theory in regard to the identity of the
+worlds. I have read a sixty-page pamphlet of his wherein he sets
+forth that form and life are developed in exactly the same manner in
+a large number of worlds. According to him, a multitude of suns, all
+similar to our own, have, do, or will shed light upon planets in every
+respect similar to the planets of our own system. There is, was, and
+will be, _ad infinitum_, Venuses, Mars, Saturns, and Jupiters, quite
+the counterpart of our Saturn, Mars, and Venus, and worlds similar to
+our own. These worlds produce exactly what our world produces, and
+bear fruits, animals, and men resembling in all respects terrestrial
+plants, animals, and human beings. The evolution of life in them is the
+same as that on our globe. Consequently, thought the aged prisoner,
+there is, was and shall be throughout the infinite space myriads of
+Monts-Saint-Michel, each containing a Blanqui.”
+
+“We know but little of the worlds whose suns shine upon our nights,”
+resumed Langelier. “We perceive, however, that subjected to the same
+mechanical and chemical laws, they differ from our own world and among
+themselves in extent and form, and that the substances burning in them
+are not distributed among all of them in the same proportions. These
+differences must produce an infinity of others which we do not suspect.
+A pebble is sufficient to change the fate of an Empire. Who knows?
+Perchance, Monsieur Goubin, many times multiplied and disseminated
+through myriads of worlds, has wiped, wipes, and shall eternally wipe
+clean his eye-glass.”
+
+Joséphin Leclerc did not suffer his friends to expatiate any further on
+astronomical dreams.
+
+“I am,” he said, “like Monsieur Goubin, of the opinion that all this
+would be heartrending were it not too far from us to affect us. What is
+of paramount interest for us, what we are curious to know is the fate
+of those who will come immediately after us in this world.”
+
+“There is no doubt,” said Langelier, “that the succession of worlds
+only fills us with sad astonishment. We should welcome with a more
+fraternal and friendly eye the future of civilisation, and the
+immediate destiny of our fellow men. The closer at hand the future,
+the more we are concerned about it. Unfortunately, moral and political
+sciences are inaccurate, and full of uncertainty. They have but an
+imperfect knowledge of the so far accomplished developments of
+human evolution, and can therefore not instruct us concerning the
+developments which remain to be completed. Equipped with hardly any
+memory, they have little or no presentiment. This is why scientific
+minds feel an insurmountable repugnance to attempt investigations, the
+uselessness of which they know, and they dare not even confess to a
+curiosity which they entertain no hope of satisfying. Willingly would
+the task be undertaken to discover what would happen, were men to
+become wiser. Plato, Sir Thomas More, Campanella, Fénelon, Cabet, and
+Paul Adam[A] have reconstructed their particular city in Atlantis, in
+the Island of Utopia, in the Sun, at Salentinum, in Icaria, in Malaya,
+and established there an abstract social administration. Others, like
+the philosopher Sébastien Mercier, and the socialist-poet William
+Morris, dived into a far-off future. But they took their system of
+morals with them. They discovered a new Atlantis, and it is a city
+of dreamland which they have harmoniously built there. Shall I also
+quote Maurice Spronck?[B] He shows us the French Republic conquered by
+the Moors, in the 230th year of its foundation. He argues thus, in
+order to induce us to hand over the government to the Conservatives
+whom alone he considers capable of warding off so great a disaster.
+Meanwhile Camille Mauclair,[C] trusting in humanity to come, reads in
+the future the victorious resistance, of Socialistic Europe against
+Mussulman Asia. Daniel Halévy dreads not the Moors, but, with greater
+show of reason, the Russians. He narrates, in his _Histoire de quatre
+ans_, the foundation, in 2001, of the United States of Europe. But
+he seeks to show us more especially that the moral equilibrium of
+nations is unstable, and that a facility suddenly introduced into the
+conditions of life may suffice to let loose on a multitude of men the
+worst scourges and the most cruel sufferings.
+
+  [A] Paul Adam, journalist and playwright; contributor to the _Revue
+      de Paris_ and the _Nouvelle Revue_.
+
+  [B] Maurice Spronck, journalist and barrister; contributor to the
+      _Journal des Débats_, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, the _Revue
+      bleue_, and the _Revue hebdomadaire_.
+
+  [C] Camille Faust, _dit_ Camille Mauclair, art critic and lecturer;
+      author of works on Greuze, Fragonard, Schumann, Rodin, and of
+      _De Watteau à Whistler_.
+
+“Few are those who have sought to know the future, out of pure
+curiosity, and without moral intention or optimistic designs. I
+know no other than H. G. Wells who, journeying through future ages,
+has discovered for humanity a fate he did not, according to every
+indication, expect; for the institution of an anthropophagous
+proletariat and an edible aristocracy is a cruel solution of social
+questions. Yet such is the fate H. G. Wells assigns to posterity. All
+the other prophets of whom I have any knowledge content themselves
+with entrusting to future centuries the realisation of their dreams.
+They do not unveil the future, being satisfied with conjuring it up.
+
+“The truth is that men do not look so far ahead without fright.
+Many consider that such an investigation is not only useless, but
+pernicious; while those most ready to believe that future events are
+discoverable are those who would most dread to discover them. This fear
+is doubtless based on profound reasons. All morals, all religions,
+embody a revelation of humanity’s destiny. The greater part of men,
+whether they admit it to, or conceal it from, themselves, would recoil
+from investigating these august revelations, to discover the emptiness
+of their anticipations. They are accustomed to endure the idea of
+manners totally different from their own, if once those manners are
+buried in the past. Thereupon they congratulate themselves on the
+progress made by morality. But, as their morality is in the main
+governed by their manners, or rather by what they allow one to see of
+them, they dare not confess to themselves that morality, which has
+continually changed with manners, up to their own day, will undergo
+a further change when they have passed out of this life, and that
+future men are liable to conceive an idea entirely at variance with
+their own as to what is permissible or not. It would go against the
+grain with them to admit that their virtues are merely transitory,
+and their gods decrepit. And, although the past is there to point out
+to them ever-changing and shifting rights and duties, they would look
+upon themselves as dupes were they to foresee that future humanity is
+to create for itself new rights, duties and gods. Finally, they fear
+disgracing themselves in the eyes of their contemporaries, in assuming
+the horrible immorality which future morality stands for. Such are the
+obstacles to a quest of the future. Look at Gallio and his friends;
+they would not have dared to foresee the equality of classes in the
+matter of marriage, the abolition of slavery, the rout of the legions,
+the fall of the Empire, the end of Rome, nor even the death of those
+very gods in whom they had all but ceased to believe.”
+
+“’Tis possible,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “but it is time for us to dine.”
+
+And, leaving the Forum bathed in the calm light of the moon, they
+wended their way through the populous streets of the city towards a
+famed but cheap eating-house in the Via Condotti.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The room was small, and hung with a smoke-stained paper dating from the
+pontificate of Pio Nono. Ancient lithographs were dependent from the
+walls, representing Cavour with his tortoise-shell-framed spectacles
+and collar-like beard, the leonine visage of Garibaldi, the stupendous
+moustaches of Victor Emanuel, a classic placing side by side of the
+combined symbols of the revolution and of the supreme power, a popular
+testimony to the Italian spirit which excels in juxtapositions, and
+in whose midst, in our own day, in Rome, the fulminating Pope and the
+excommunicated King daily exchange assurances of good-neighbourship,
+with an exquisite grasp of politics, and not without a certain flavour
+of delicate comedy. The mahogany sideboard was laden with plated
+chafing-dishes and alabaster goblets. The establishment affected for
+new things a contempt appropriate to long-standing renown.
+
+Seated around a table bedecked with roses, and with flasks of Chianti
+before them, the five continued their philosophic discourse.
+
+“It is quite true,” said Nicole Langelier, “that the heart fails in
+the case of many men, when gazing into the abyss of future events. It
+is moreover certain that our all too imperfect knowledge of facts past
+and gone does not supply us with the elements required to enable us
+to determine accurately what is to succeed them. However, since the
+past of human social organisations is in part known to us, the future
+of those societies, a continuation and consequence of their past, is
+not wholly beyond our ken. It is not impossible to observe certain
+social phenomena, and to define from the conditions under which they
+have already occurred, the conditions under which they will reappear.
+We are not barred, when witnessing the commencement of an order of
+facts, from comparing it with a past order of analogous facts, and
+from deducing from the completion of the second a like completion of
+the first. By way of example: when observing that the forms of labour
+are changeable, that serfdom has succeeded slavery, salaried labour,
+serfdom, new methods of production may be anticipated; when it is shown
+that industrial capital has for barely a century taken the place of
+the small artisans and peasant property, one is led to ponder over the
+form which is to succeed capital; when studying the manner in which
+was carried out the redemption of the feudal burdens and conditions
+of servitude, one is enabled to conceive how the redemption of the
+means of production nowadays constituting private ownership may some
+day be carried out. By studying the great Services of the State now in
+operation, it is possible to form a conception of future socialistic
+methods of production; and, after having thus investigated in several
+respects the present and the past of human industry, we shall, lacking
+certainties, determine by aid of probabilities whether collectivism
+is to be realised some day, not because it is just, for there is no
+reason for believing in the triumph of justice, but because it is
+the necessary sequel to the present state of things, and the fatal
+consequence of capitalistic evolution.
+
+“Let us, if you like, take another example: we possess some experience
+of the life and death of religions. The end of Roman polytheism in
+particular, is familiar to us. Its lamentable end enables us to imagine
+that of Christianity, whose decline we are witnessing.
+
+“We may similarly seek to find out whether future humanity will be
+bellicose or peaceful.”
+
+“I am curious to learn,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “how to set about it.”
+
+M. Goubin shook his head, saying:
+
+“Such a quest is useless. We know its result beforehand. War will last
+as long as the world.”
+
+“There is nothing to prove it,” replied Langelier, “and a consideration
+of the past leads one to believe, on the contrary, that war is not one
+of the essential conditions of social life.”
+
+And Langelier, while waiting for the _minestra_ (soup) which was long
+in making its appearance, developed the foregoing idea, without,
+however, departing from the moderation characterising his mind.
+
+“Although the early periods of the human race,” he said, “are lost to
+us in impenetrable darkness, it is certain that men were not always
+warlike. They were not so during the long ages of the pastoral life;
+the memory of which survives only in a small number of words common
+to all Indo-European languages, and which reveal innocent manners.
+And there are reasons for believing that these peaceful pastoral
+centuries had a far longer duration than the agricultural, industrial,
+and commercial periods which, following them in a necessary progress,
+brought about between tribes and nations a state of all but constant
+war.
+
+“It was by force of arms that it was most frequently sought to acquire
+property, lands, women, slaves, and cattle. At first, wars were waged
+between village and village. Next, the vanquished, joining hands
+with the victors, formed a nation, and wars occurred between nation
+and nation. Each of these peoples, in order to retain possession of
+the acquired riches, or to make further acquisitions, contended with
+neighbouring peoples for the possession of strongholds securing the
+command of roads, mountain passes, river courses, and the seashore. In
+the end, nations formed confederations, and contracted alliances. Thus
+it came about that men banded together; as they increased in strength,
+instead of contending for the goods of the earth, formally bartered
+them. The community of sentiments and interests gradually became
+broadened. A day came when Rome imagined she had established it the
+world over. Augustus thought he had inaugurated the era of universal
+peace.
+
+“We know how this illusion was gradually and savagely dissipated, and
+how the barbarian hordes overwhelmed the Roman peace. These barbarians,
+who had settled within the Empire, cut one another’s throats on its
+ruins, for a space of fourteen centuries, and founded in carnage
+countries baptized in blood. Of such was the life of nations in the
+Middle Ages, and the constitution of the great European monarchies.
+
+“In those days, a state of war was alone possible and conceivable.
+All the forces of the world were organised solely for the purpose of
+maintaining it.
+
+“If the reawakening of thought, at the time of the Renaissance,
+permitted a few sparse minds to conceive better regulated relations
+between nations, at one and the same time, the burning desire to
+invent, and the thirst for knowledge supplied fresh food to the warrior
+instinct. The discovery of the West Indies, the exploration of Africa,
+the navigation of the Pacific Ocean, opened up vast territories
+to European avidity. The white kingdoms joined issue over the
+extermination of the red, yellow, and black races, and for the space of
+four centuries gave themselves up madly to the pillaging of three great
+divisions of the world. This is what is styled modern civilisation.
+
+“During this uninterrupted succession of deeds of rapine and violence,
+Europeans acquired a knowledge of the extent and configuration of
+the earth. As they progressed in this knowledge, so did their work
+of destruction proceed apace. To the present day, the whites come in
+contact with the black or the yellow races but to enslave or massacre
+them. The peoples whom we call barbarians know us so far through our
+crimes only.
+
+“For all that, those navigations, those explorations undertaken in
+a spirit of savage cupidity, these tracks by land and by sea opened
+up to conquerors, adventurers, hunters of and traders in men, these
+life-destroying colonisations, this brutal impulse which has led and
+still leads one-half of humanity to destroy the other, are the fatal
+conditions of a further progress of civilisation, and the terrible
+means which shall have prepared, for a still undetermined future, the
+peace of the world.
+
+“This time, ’tis the whole world assimilated, in spite of enormous
+dissimilarities, to the state of the Roman Empire under Augustus.
+The Roman peace was the fruit of conquest. Universal peace will most
+assuredly not be brought about by the same means. No Empire is there
+to-day which can lay claim to the hegemony of the lands and seas
+covering the globe, known and surveyed at last. But, in spite of their
+being less apparent than those of political and military domination,
+the bonds which are beginning to unite the whole of humanity, and no
+longer merely a part of humanity, are none the less real; they are both
+more supple and more solid, more intimate and infinite in variety,
+since they are connected, athwart the fictions of public life, with the
+realities of social life.
+
+“The increasing multiplicity of communications and exchanges, the
+compulsory solidarity of the financial markets of every capital, of
+commercial markets vainly striving to guarantee their independence by
+recourse to unfortunate expedients, the rapid growth of international
+socialism, seem likely to guarantee, sooner or later, the union of the
+peoples of every continent. If at the present moment the Imperialist
+spirit of the great States and the haughty ambitions of armed
+nations seem to give the lie to these previsions, and to damn these
+aspirations, it will be perceived that in reality modern nationalism
+amounts merely to a confused aspiration towards a more and more vast
+union of intellects and wills, and that the dream of a greater England,
+a greater Germany, a greater America, leads, will or do whatever you
+may, to the dream of a greater humanity, and to a partnership between
+nations for the common exploitation of the riches of the earth....”
+
+The speech was interrupted by the appearance of the tavern-keeper
+bearing a steaming soup-tureen and grated cheese.
+
+And, from amid the hot and aromatic vapour of the soup, Nicole
+Langelier concluded his argument with these words:
+
+“There will doubtless be further wars. The savage instincts coupled
+with the natural desires, pride and hunger, which have embroiled the
+world for so many centuries, will again disturb it. The human masses
+have so far not found their equilibrium. The sagacity of nations is not
+yet sufficiently methodical to secure the common welfare, by means of
+the freedom and the facility of exchanges, man has so far not come to
+be looked up to with respect everywhere by man, the several portions
+of humanity are not yet about to associate harmoniously for the purpose
+of building the cells and organs of one and the same body. It will not
+be vouchsafed even unto the youngest of us to witness the close of the
+era of arms. But, we feel within us a presentiment of these better
+times which we are not to experience. If we extend into the future the
+present trend, we may even now determine the establishment of more
+perfect and frequent communications between all races and all nations,
+a more general and stronger feeling of human solidarity, the rational
+organisation of labour, and the coming of the United States of the
+World.
+
+“Universal peace will become a fact some day, not because men will
+become better (’tis more than we may hope for), but because a new order
+of things, a new science, and new economic necessities will force on
+men the state of peace, just as formerly the very conditions of their
+existence placed and kept them in a state of war.”
+
+“Nicole Langelier, a rose has shed a leaf in your glass,” said Giacomo
+Boni. “This has not taken place without the permission of the gods. Let
+us drink to the future peace of the world.”
+
+Raising his glass, Joséphin Leclerc remarked:
+
+“This wine of Chianti has a tart savour, and a light sparkle. Let us
+drink to peace, the while Russians and Japanese are waging a bitter
+war in Manchuria and in Korea Bay.”
+
+“That war,” resumed Langelier, “marks one of the great periods in the
+history of the world. And, in order to grasp its meaning, we must hark
+back two thousand years.
+
+“The Romans, assuredly, did not suspect the vastness of the barbarian
+world, and had no conception of those immense human reservoirs which
+were to burst on them one fine day, and submerge them. They did not
+suspect that there existed in the world any other than the Roman peace.
+And yet, an older and vaster one there was, the Chinese peace.
+
+“Not but what their merchants had business relations with the
+merchants of Serica. The latter were wont to bring raw silk to a spot
+situated to the north of the Pamir table-land, named the Tower of
+Stone. The merchants of the Empire went thither. Bolder Latin traders
+penetrated as far as the Gulf of Tong-King and the Chinese coasts up
+to Hang-chau-fu, or Hanoi. Nevertheless, the Romans did not conceive
+that Serica constituted an Empire more densely populated than their own
+one, richer, and more advanced in agriculture and political economy.
+The Chinese, on their part, knew the white men. Their annals mention
+the fact that the Emperor An-tung, under which name we recognise
+Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, despatched an embassy to them, which
+was perhaps merely an expedition of navigators and merchants. But
+they were ignorant of the fact that a civilisation more seething and
+violent than their own, as well as more prolific and infinitely more
+expansive, was spread over one of the faces of the globe of which they
+covered another face: the Chinese, agriculturists and gardeners full
+of experience, honest and expert merchants, led a happy life, owing to
+their system of exchange and to their immense associations of credit.
+Contented with their subtle science, their exquisite politeness, their
+singularly human piety, and their immutable wisdom, they were doubtless
+not anxious to become acquainted with the ways of life and thought
+of the white men who had come from the land of Cæsar. Perchance the
+ambassadors of An-tung may have seemed somewhat gross and barbarian to
+them.
+
+“The two great civilisations, the yellow and the white, continued
+ignorant of each other until the day when the Portuguese, having
+doubled the Cape of Good Hope, settled down to trade at Macao.
+Merchants and Christian missionaries established themselves in China,
+and indulged in every kind of violence and rapine. The Chinese
+tolerated them, in the manner of men accustomed to works of patience,
+and marvellously capable of endurance; nevertheless, they could on
+occasion take life with all the refinements of cruelty. For nearly
+three whole centuries the Jesuits were, in the Middle Kingdom, a source
+of endless disturbances. In our own times, the Christian acquired the
+habit of sending jointly or separately into that vast Empire, whenever
+order was disturbed, soldiers who restored it by means of theft,
+rape, pillage, murder, and incendiarism, and of proceeding at short
+intervals with the pacific penetration of the country with rifles and
+guns. The poorly armed Chinese either defend themselves badly or not
+at all, and so they are massacred with delightful facility. They are
+polite and ceremonious, but are reproached with cherishing feeble
+sentiments of affection for Europeans. The grievances we have against
+them are greatly of the order of those which Mr. Du Chaillu cherished
+towards his gorilla. Mr. Du Chaillu, while in a forest, brought down
+with his rifle the mother of a gorilla. In its death, the brute was
+still pressing its young to its bosom. He tore it from this embrace,
+and dragged it with him in a cage across Africa, for the purpose of
+selling it in Europe. Now, the young animal gave him just cause for
+complaint. It was unsociable, and actually starved itself to death.
+‘I was powerless,’ says Mr. Du Chaillu, ‘to correct its evil nature.’
+We complain of the Chinese with as great a show of reason as Mr. Du
+Chaillu of his gorilla.
+
+“In 1901, order having been disturbed at Peking, the troops of the
+five Great Powers, under the command of a German Field-Marshal,
+restored it by the customary means. Having in this fashion covered
+themselves with military glory, the five Powers signed one of the
+innumerable treaties by which they guarantee the integrity of the very
+China whose provinces they divide among themselves.
+
+“Russia’s share was Manchuria, and she closed Korea to Japanese trade.
+Japan, which in 1894 had beaten the Chinese on land and on sea, and
+had taken a part, in 1901, in the pacifying action of the Powers, saw
+with concentrated fury the advance of the voracious and slow-footed
+she-bear. And, while the huge brute indolently stretched out its muzzle
+towards the Japanese beehive, the yellow bees, arming their wings and
+stings together, riddled it with burning punctures.
+
+“‘It is a colonial war,’ was the expression used by a high-placed
+Russian official to my friend Georges Bourdon.[D] Now, the fundamental
+principal of every colonial war is that the European should be more
+powerful than the peoples whom he is fighting; this is as clear as
+noonday. It is understood that in these kinds of wars the European is
+to attack with artillery, while the Asiatic or African is of course
+to defend himself with arrows, clubs, assegais and tomahawks. It
+is tolerated that he should procure a few antiquated flint-locks
+and cartridge-pouches; this aids in rendering colonisation more
+glorious. But in no case is it permissible that he should be armed
+and instructed in European fashion. His fleet must consist of junks,
+canoes and ‘dug-outs.’ Should he perchance purchase ships from European
+ship-owners, such ships shall naturally be unfit for use. The Chinese
+who fill their arsenals with porcelain shells conform to the rules of
+colonial warfare.
+
+  [D] M. Georges Bourdon, journalist, on the staff of _Le Figaro_.
+
+“The Japanese have departed from these rules. They wage war in
+accordance with the principles taught in France by General Bonnal. They
+greatly outweighed their adversaries in knowledge and intelligence.
+While fighting better than Europeans, they show no respect for
+consecrated usages, and act to a certain degree in a fashion contrary
+to the law of nations.
+
+“’Tis in vain that serious individuals like Monsieur Edmond Théry[E]
+demonstrated to them that they were bound to be beaten, in the superior
+interest of the European market and in conformity with the most firmly
+established economic laws. Vainly did the proconsul of Indo-China,
+Monsieur Doumer himself, call upon them to suffer, and at short notice,
+decisive defeats on sea and on land. ‘What a financial sadness would
+bow down our hearts,’ exclaimed this great man, ‘were Bezobrazoff and
+Alexeieff not to extract another million out of the Korean forests.
+They are kings. Like them, I was a king: our cause is a common one. Oh
+ye Japanese! Imitate in their gentleness the copper-coloured folk over
+whom I reigned so gloriously under Méline.’ In vain did Dr. Charles
+Richet,[F] skeleton in hand, represent to them that being prognathous,
+and not having the muscles of their calves sufficiently developed, they
+were under the obligation of seeking flight in the trees when face to
+face with the Russians, who are brachycephalous and as such eminently
+civilising, as was demonstrated when they drowned five thousand Chinese
+in the Amur. ‘Bear in mind that you are links between monkey and man,’
+obligingly said to them my Lord Professor Richet, ‘as a consequence of
+which, if you should defeat the Russians or Finno-Letto-Ugro-Slavs, it
+would be exactly as if monkeys were to beat you. Is it not plain to
+you?’ They heeded him not.
+
+  [E] M. Edmond Théry, journalist, on the staff of _Le Figaro_.
+      Has been entrusted by the French Government with several
+      politico-economic missions; author of several works in this
+      connection.
+
+  [F] Dr. Charles Richet, a noted physician, who has written plays,
+      and is the author of several works on physiology and sociology.
+
+“At the present moment, the Russians are paying the penalty, in the
+waters of Japan and in the gorges of Manchuria, not only of their
+grasping and brutal policy in the East, but of the colonial policy of
+all Europe. They are now expiating, not merely their own crimes, but
+those of the whole of military and commercial Christianity. When saying
+this, I do not mean to say that there is a justice in the world. But
+we witness a strange whirligig of things, and brute force, up to now
+the sole judge of human actions, indulges occasionally in unexpected
+pranks. Its sudden starts aside destroy an equilibrium thought to be
+stable. And its pranks, which are ever the work of some hidden rule,
+bring about interesting results. The Japanese cross the Yalu and defeat
+the Russians in good form. Their sailors annihilate artistically a
+European fleet. Immediately do we discern that a danger threatens
+us. If it indeed exists, who created it? It was not the Japanese who
+sought out the Russians. It was not the yellow men who hunted up the
+whites. We there and then make the discovery of a Yellow Peril. For
+many long years have Asiatics been familiar with the White Peril. The
+looting of the Summer Palace, the massacres of Pekin, the drownings of
+Blagovestchenk, the dismemberment of China, were these not enough to
+alarm the Chinese? As to the Japanese, could they feel secure under
+the guns of Port Arthur? We created the White Peril. The White Peril
+has engendered the Yellow Peril. We have here concatenations giving to
+the ancient Necessity which rules the world an appearance of divine
+Justice, and must perforce admire the astonishing behaviour of that
+blind queen of men and gods, when seeing Japan, formerly so cruel to
+the Chinese and Koreans, and the unpaid accessory to the crimes of
+Europeans in China, become the avenger of China, and the hope of the
+yellow race.
+
+“It does not, however, appear at first sight that the Yellow Peril at
+which European economists are terrified is to be compared to the White
+Peril suspended over Asia. The Chinese do not send to Paris, Berlin,
+and St. Petersburg missionaries to teach Christians the Fung-chui, and
+sow disorder in European affairs. A Chinese expeditionary force did
+not land in Quiberon Bay to demand of the Government of the Republic
+_extra-territoriality_, _i.e._, the right of trying by a tribunal of
+mandarins cases pending between Chinese and Europeans. Admiral Togo
+did not come and bombard Brest roads with a dozen battleships, for the
+purpose of improving Japanese trade in France. The flower of French
+nationalism, the _élite_ of our Trublions, did not besiege in their
+mansions in the Avenues Hoche and Marceau the Legations of China and
+of Japan, and Marshal Oyama did not, for the same reason, lead the
+combined armies of the Far East to the Boulevard de la Madeleine to
+demand the punishment of the foreigner-hating Trublions. He did not
+burn Versailles in the name of a higher civilisation. The armies of
+the Great Asiatic Powers did not carry away to Tokio and Peking the
+Louvre paintings and the silver service of the Elysée.
+
+“No indeed! Monsieur Edmond Théry himself admits that the yellow men
+are not sufficiently civilised to imitate the whites so faithfully. Nor
+does he foresee that they will ever rise to so high a moral culture.
+How could it be possible for them to possess our virtues? They are not
+Christians. But men entitled to speak consider that the Yellow Peril
+is none the less to be dreaded for all that it is economic. Japan, and
+China organised by Japan, threaten us, in all the markets of Europe,
+with a competition frightful, monstrous, enormous, and deformed, the
+mere idea of which causes the hair of the economists to stand on end.
+That is why Japanese and Chinese must be exterminated. There can be
+no doubt about the matter. But war must also be declared against the
+United States to prevent it from selling iron and steel at a lower
+price than our manufacturers less well equipped in machinery.
+
+“Let us for once admit the truth, and for a moment cease flattering
+ourselves. Old Europe and new Europe--for that is America’s true
+name--have inaugurated economic war. Each and every nation is waging
+an industrial struggle against the others. Everywhere does production
+arm itself furiously against production. We are displaying bad grace
+when we complain that we are witnessing fresh competing and disturbing
+products invade the market of the world thus thrown into confusion. Of
+what use are our lamentations? That might is right is our god. If Tokio
+is the weaker, it shall be in the wrong and it shall be made to feel
+it; if it is the stronger, right will be on its side, and we shall have
+no reproach to cast at it. Where is the nation in the world entitled to
+speak in the name of justice?
+
+“We have taught the Japanese both the capitalistic _régime_ and war.
+They are a cause of alarm because they are becoming like ourselves.
+In truth, it is awful. They dare to defend themselves with European
+weapons against Europeans. Their generals, their naval officers, who
+have studied in England, in Germany, and in France, reflect honour on
+their instructors. Several of them have followed the classes of our
+special military schools. The Russian Grand Dukes, who feared that no
+good could come out of military institutions too democratic to their
+taste, must feel reassured.
+
+“I am unable to foretell the issue of the war. The Russian Empire
+opposes to the methodical energy of the Japanese its irresolute forces
+which the savage imbecility of its government restrains, the dishonesty
+of a voracious administration robs, and military incapacity leads to
+disaster. The stupendousness of its impotence and the depths of its
+disorganisation stand revealed. Withal, its golden reservoirs, kept
+filled by its rich creditors, are all but inexhaustible. On the other
+hand, its enemy has no other resources than onerous loans obtained with
+difficulty, of which victory itself may perchance deprive them. For
+while English and Americans are one in assisting it to weaken Russia,
+they do not intend that it shall become powerful and to be feared. It
+is hard to predict the final victory of one combatant over the other.
+But if Japan makes the yellow men respected by the white men, it will
+have greatly served the cause of humanity, and paved the way unawares
+and doubtless against its own wish for the pacific organisation of the
+world.”
+
+“What do you mean,” said M. Goubin, raising his eyes from his plate
+filled with a savoury _fritto_.
+
+“It is feared,” continued Nicole Langelier, “that Japan grown to
+manhood will educate China, teach it to defend itself and to exploit
+its wealth itself, and that Japan will create a strong China. No need
+to look upon such a contingency with alarm; it should, on the contrary,
+be hoped for in the universal interest. Strong nations co-operate to
+the harmony and wealth of the world. Weak nations, like China and
+Turkey, are a perpetual cause of disturbances and perils. But we are
+ever in too great a haste in our fears and hopes. Should victorious
+Japan undertake to organise the old yellow Empire, it will not succeed
+in its task that quickly. It will require time to teach China that a
+China exists. For she knows it not, and as long as she is unaware of
+it, there will not be any China. A people exists only in the knowledge
+possessed by it of its existence. There are 350,000,000 Chinese, but
+they are not aware of the fact. As long as they have not counted
+themselves, they will not count for anything. They will not even exist
+by dint of numbers. ‘Number off!’ is the first word of command spoken
+by the drill-sergeant to his men. He is there and then teaching them
+the principle of societies. But it takes a long time for 350,000,000
+men to number themselves. Nevertheless, Ular, who is a European out
+of the common, since he believes that one should be humane and just
+towards the Chinese, informs us that a great national movement is
+simmering in all the provinces of the huge empire.”
+
+“And even should it happen,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that victorious
+Japan came to infuse into Mongols, Chinese, and Tibetans a
+consciousness of themselves, and caused them to be respected by the
+white races, in what way would the peace of the world be better
+assured, and the conquering mania of nations be kept within stricter
+bounds? Would not negro humanity still remain to be exterminated?
+Where is the black nation which will insure the respecting of negroes
+by the white and yellow races?”
+
+“But,” interposed Nicole Langelier, “who can define how far one of the
+great human races may go? The blacks are not, like the red man, dying
+out through contact with the Europeans. Where is the prophet who will
+venture to tell the 200,000,000 African blacks that their posterity
+will never enjoy wealth and peace on the lakes and great rivers? The
+white men passed through the ages of caves and lacustrine villages.
+They were at that time wild and naked. They dried rude potteries in the
+sun. Their chiefs led barbarian dances at which they shouted. They knew
+no other sciences than those of their sorcerers. Since those days they
+have built the Parthenon, conceived geometry, subjected the expression
+of their thought and the motions of their body to the laws of harmony.
+
+“Are you then going to say to the African negroes: ‘You shall for ever
+carry on an internecine war between tribe and tribe, and you shall
+inflict upon one another atrocities and absurd tortures; King Gléglé,
+permeated with a religious idea, shall for all time have prisoners tied
+up in a basket and thrown from the roof of his royal hut; you shall for
+ever devour with enjoyment the strips of flesh torn from the decomposed
+cadavers of your aged relations; for ever shall explorers unload
+their rifles on you, and smoke you out in your kraals; the wonderful
+Christian soldier will enjoy in his bravery the amusement of hacking
+your women to pieces; the gay and festive sailor from the befogged seas
+shall for all time kick in the bellies of your little children, just to
+take the stiffness out of his knee-joints? Can you safely prophesy to
+one-third of humanity a state of perpetual ignominy?
+
+“I am unable to say whether one day, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe predicted in
+1840, a life will awaken in Africa full of a splendour and magnificence
+unknown to the cold-blooded races of the West, and whether art will
+blossom forth in new and dazzling forms. The blacks possess a keen
+appreciation of music. It may happen that a delightful negro art of
+dance and song shall see the light of day. In the meanwhile, the
+coloured folk of the Southern States are making rapid strides in
+capitalistic civilisation. Monsieur Jean Finot[G] has recently supplied
+us with information on the subject.
+
+  [G] M. Jean Finot, editor of _La Revue_, and contributor to several
+      French and European publications.
+
+“Fifty years ago they did not, as a whole, own two hundred and
+fifty acres of land. Nowadays their property is valued at over
+£160,000,000. They were illiterate. To-day fifty per cent. of them
+can read and write. There are black novelists, poets, economists, and
+philanthropists.
+
+“The half-breeds, the issue of master and slave, are singularly
+intelligent and vigorous. The coloured men, both cunning and ferocious,
+instinctive and calculating, will gradually (so one of them has
+confided to me) reap the advantage of number, and one day lord it over
+the effeminate creole race which exercises so lightly over the blacks
+its fitful cruelty. It may be that the mulatto of genius, who will make
+the children of the whites pay dearly the blood of the negroes lynched
+by their fathers, is already born.”
+
+M. Goubin primed himself with his powerful eye-glass, and remarked:
+
+“Were the Japanese to be victorious, they would take Indo-China from
+us.”
+
+“Thereby rendering us a great service,” answered Langelier. “Colonies
+are the curse of nations.”
+
+M. Goubin’s indignant silence was his sole reply.
+
+“I cannot listen to such statements,” exclaimed Joséphin Leclerc. “We
+require outlets for our products, and territories for our industrial
+and commercial expansion. What are you thinking of, Langelier? One
+policy alone governs Europe, America, and the world to-day--colonial
+policy.”
+
+Nicole Langelier, unruffled, replied:
+
+“Colonial policy is the most recent form of barbarism, or, if you
+prefer, the term of civilisation. I make no distinction between these
+two expressions; they are identical. What men call civilisation is
+the present condition of manners, while what they style barbarism are
+anterior conditions. The manners of to-day will be styled barbarian
+when they shall be of the past. It is patent to me that our manners and
+morals embody the idea that strong nations shall destroy the weaker
+ones. Of such is the principle of the law of nations.
+
+“It remains to be seen, however, whether conquests abroad always
+constitute a good stroke of business for nations. It would not seem so.
+What have Mexico and Peru done for Spain? Brazil for Portugal? Batavia
+for Holland? There are various kinds of colonies. There are colonies
+which afford to unfortunate Europeans desert and uncultivated lands.
+These, loyal as long as they remain poor, separate from the mother
+country as soon as they become prosperous. Some there are which are
+inhabitable; these supply raw material, and import manufactured goods.
+Now it is plain that these colonies enrich, not those who govern them,
+but whoever trades with them. The greater part of the time they are
+not worth what they cost. Moreover, they may at any moment expose the
+mother country to military disasters.”
+
+“How about England?” interrupted M. Goubin.
+
+“England is less a nation than a race. The Anglo-Saxons know no
+fatherland but the sea. England, looked upon as wealthy in her vast
+domains, owes her fortune and her power to her commerce. It is not her
+colonies which should be envied her, but her merchants, the authors of
+her wealth. Do you imagine, by way of illustration, that the Transvaal
+represents so very good a stroke of business for her? For all that, it
+is conceivable that in the present state of the world nations who bring
+forth many children and manufacture products in large quantities should
+seek territories and markets in far-off lands, and secure possession
+of them by stratagem and violence. How different it is in our own
+case! Our thrifty nation, careful not to have more children than the
+natal soil can feed without difficulty, and producing in a moderate
+degree, does not willingly embark on distant adventures; our France,
+who hardly goes beyond her garden wall, great heavens, what need has
+she of colonies? Of what use are they to her? What do they bring her?
+She has spent men and money in profusion, in order that the Congo,
+Cochin-China, Annam, Tonking, Guiana, and Madagascar shall purchase
+calicoes from Manchester, guns from Birmingham and Liége, brandies from
+Dantzig, and cases of wine all the way from Bordeaux to Hamburg. She
+has, for seventy years, despoiled, hunted, and shot down Arabs, and in
+the end she has peopled Algeria with Italians and Spaniards!
+
+“The irony of these results is cruel enough, and it is hard to realise
+that this empire, ten or eleven times as big as France herself, has
+been formed to our detriment. But, it must be taken into consideration
+that whereas the French nation derives no advantage whatsoever from
+the possession of territories in Africa and Asia, the heads of its
+Government, on the other hand, find it to their great advantage to
+acquire them. They thereby secure the affection of the navy and army,
+which on the occasion of colonial expeditions reap a harvest of
+promotions, pensions, and crosses, to say nothing of the glory won in
+defeating the enemy. They conciliate the clergy by opening new paths
+to the Propaganda, and by allocating territories to Catholic missions.
+They make joyous the ship-owners, builders, and army contractors,
+whom they load with orders. They secure for themselves in the country
+itself a numerous following by the granting of concessions of immense
+forests and plantations without end. And, what is still more precious
+to them, they attach to their majority every parliamentary jobber
+and kerbstone-broker. Lastly, they cajole the multitude, proud in
+its possession of a yellow and black empire, which makes Germany and
+England turn green with envy. They are looked upon as good citizens,
+patriots, and great statesmen. And if, like Ferry, they incur the
+risk of going under, as the result of some military disaster, they
+willingly run the risk fully convinced that the most harmful of distant
+expeditions will cost them fewer difficulties, and will inveigle them
+into fewer perils than the most useful of social reforms.
+
+“You can now realise why we have occasionally had imperialist
+ministers, jealous of aggrandising our colonial domain. We must
+congratulate ourselves, however, and praise the moderation of our
+rulers, who might have burdened us with still more colonies.
+
+“But all danger has not been averted, and we are threatened with an
+eighty years’ warfare in Morocco. Is there never to be an end to the
+colonial mania?
+
+“I am fully aware that nations are not sensible. How can it be
+expected of them, if one considers what they are made of? Still, a
+certain instinct oftentimes warns them of what is harmful. They are
+occasionally endowed with the power of observing. In the long run they
+undergo the painful experience of their errors and blunders. The day
+will come when it will dawn upon them that colonies are a source of
+perils and ruinous results. Commercial barbarism will be followed by
+commercial civilisation, and forcible, by pacific penetration. These
+ideas have to-day found an echo even in the bosom of parliaments. They
+will prevail, not because men will be more disinterested, but because
+they will know their own interests better.
+
+“The great human asset is man himself. In order to rate the terrestrial
+globe, it is necessary to begin by rating men. To exploit the soil, the
+mines, the waters, all the substances and all the forces of our planet,
+it needs man, the whole of man; humanity, the whole of humanity. The
+complete exploitation of the terrestrial globe demands the united
+labour of white, yellow, and black men. By reducing, diminishing, and
+weakening, or, to sum it up in one word, by colonising a portion of
+humanity, we are working against ourselves. It is to our advantage
+that yellow and black men should be powerful, free, and wealthy. Our
+prosperity and our wealth depend on theirs. The more is produced, the
+more will there be consumed. The greater the profit they derive from
+us, the greater the profit we shall derive from them. If they reap the
+benefit of our labours, so shall we fully reap theirs.
+
+“If we study the movements which govern the destinies of societies, we
+may perhaps discover signs that the era of violent deeds is coming to
+an end. War, which was formerly a standing institution among nations,
+is now intermittent, and the periods of peace have become of longer
+duration than those of war. Our country affords the observations of
+a fact full of interest, for the French nation presents an original
+characteristic in the military history of nations. Whereas other
+nations never waged war except from interest or necessity, alone the
+French have fought for the pleasure of fighting. Now it is remarkable
+that the taste of our compatriots has undergone a change. Thirty years
+ago Renan wrote: ‘Whoever knows France as a whole and in her provincial
+varieties will not hesitate to recognise the fact that the movement
+swaying this country for the past fifty years is essentially pacific.’
+It is a fact attested by a large number of observers that in 1870
+France had no desire to have recourse to the arbitrament of war, and
+that the declaration of war was greeted with consternation. It is an
+assured fact that few Frenchmen dream of taking the field, and that
+everybody readily accepts the idea that the army exists in order to
+avoid a war. Let me quote one example out of a thousand in confirmation
+of this state of mind. Monsieur Ribot, a representative of the people
+and a former Cabinet Minister, having been invited to some patriotic
+celebration, replied with an eloquent letter, begging to be excused.
+The same Monsieur Ribot knits his brows superciliously at the mere
+mention of the word disarmament. He has towards standards and cannon
+the leaning proper to a former Minister of Foreign Affairs. In his
+letter he denounces as a national peril the pacific ideas disseminated
+by the Socialist. He sees in them a spirit of renunciation he cannot
+endure. Not that he is of a bellicose turn of mind. He, too, sighs
+for peace, but a peace full of pomp, magnificent, and flashing with
+the same pride as war. Between Monsieur Ribot and Jaurès, the matter
+is merely one of form. Both of them are for peace. Jaurès, simply;
+Monsieur Ribot, superbly. That is all. Better still and more surely
+than the Socialist democracy which contents itself with a bloused or
+coated peace does the sentiment of the bourgeois, who demand a peace
+gleaming with military insignia and bedecked with emblems of glory,
+testify to the inevitable decline of all idea of revenge and conquests,
+since one discerns in it the military instinct, at the very time when
+it is losing its nature and is becoming pacific.
+
+“France is acquiring by degrees the sentiment of her true strength,
+consisting in intellectual strength; she is becoming conscious of her
+mission, which is the sowing of ideas and the exercise of a sway over
+thought. She will within measurable time perceive that her only stable
+power has lain in her speakers, her writers, and her men of science.
+Hence she will some day fain have to recognise that the force of
+numbers, after having so often betrayed her, is finally escaping from
+her, and that the time has come for her to resign herself to the glory
+which the exercise of the mind and the use of reason assure her of.”
+
+Jean Boilly, shaking his head, said:
+
+“You ask that France should teach other nations concord and peace. Are
+you so sure that she will be listened to and her example followed?
+Is her own tranquillity so assured? Has she not to fear threats from
+outside, to foresee dangers, to watch over her safety, and to provide
+for her defence? One swallow does not make a summer; one nation does
+not make the peace of the world. Is it so sure that Germany keeps up
+an army with the sole object of not waging war? Her Social-Democrats
+desire peace. But they are not the masters, and their deputies do
+not enjoy in the Parliament the authority which the number of their
+electors should give them. And Russia, who has hardly entered upon the
+industrial period, do you believe that she will soon be entering upon
+the pacific period? Is it not to be feared that after having disturbed
+Asia she will disturb Europe?
+
+“Supposing even that Europe should become pacific, can you not see
+that America would become warlike? Following upon Cuba, reduced to the
+state of a vassal republic, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the annexation of
+the Philippines, it is impossible to say that the American Union is
+not a conquering nation. A publicist of Yankee proclivities, Stead,
+has said amid the plaudits of the whole of the United States: ‘The
+Americanisation of the world is on the march.’ And then there is Mr.
+Roosevelt, whose dream is to plant the Stars and Stripes in South
+Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. Mr. Roosevelt is Imperialist
+and he sighs for an America mistress of the world. Between ourselves,
+he is planning the Empire of Augustus. He has unfortunately perused
+Livy. The conquests of the Romans banish sleep from him. Have you read
+his speeches? They breathe a bellicose spirit. ‘Fight, my friends,’
+says Mr. Roosevelt, ‘and fight hard. There is nothing like blows. We
+are upon earth only to exterminate one another. Those who tell you the
+contrary are men without morality. Mistrust men who think. Thought
+enervates. ’Tis a French failing. The Romans conquered the world. They
+lost it. We are the modern Romans.’ Words full of eloquence, backed
+up with a navy which will soon be the second in the world, and with a
+military Budget of 40,500,000 francs!
+
+“The Yankees declare that in four years’ time they will fight Germany.
+If we are to believe this, they should first tell us where they
+expect to come into contact with the enemy. That a Russia, the serf
+of her Czar, that a still feudal Germany, should entertain armies
+for fighting purposes, this one is tempted to lay to the door of
+ancient habits and the survival of a strenuous past. But that a young
+democracy, the United States of America, an aggregation of business
+men, a mass of emigrants from all countries, lacking community,
+traditions, and memories, madly cast into the scramble for the
+mighty dollar, should of a sudden be swept with the desire of firing
+torpedoes at the flanks of battleships, and of exploding mines under
+the enemy’s columns, affords a proof that the inordinate struggle for
+the production and exploitation of riches keeps alive the employment
+of and taste for brutal force, that industrial violence engenders
+military violence, and that mercantile rivalries kindle between nations
+hatreds that bloodshed can alone extinguish. The colonial mania of
+which you were speaking a while ago is but one of the thousand forms
+of the much-vaunted competition of our economists. The capitalistic
+state is just as much a warlike one as the feudal. The era has dawned
+of great wars for the industrial sovereignty. Under the present
+_régime_ of national production it is the cannon which fixes tariffs,
+establishes customs, opens and closes markets. There exists no other
+regulator of commerce and industry. Extermination is the fatal result
+of the economic conditions in which the civilised world finds itself
+to-day....”
+
+The perfume of Gorgonzola and Stracchino was pervading the table. The
+waiter was bringing in wax-candles to each of which was attached the
+_abbrustolatoio_[H] wherewith to light the long cigars with straws, so
+dear to Italians.
+
+  [H] _Abbrustolatoio_--apparatus attached to the candle; it has
+      two rings through which the cigar is placed, and left to
+      burn awhile.
+
+Hippolyte Dufresne, who for some time past seemed to have remained
+indifferent to the conversation, here remarked in a low tone tinged
+with an ostentatious modesty:
+
+“Gentlemen, our friend Langelier was asserting just now that many men
+are afraid of disgracing themselves in the eyes of their contemporaries
+by assuming the horrible immorality which is to be the morality of the
+future. I do not entertain a like fear, and I have written a little
+tale, which has perhaps no other merit than the one of revealing my
+calmness of mind when considering the future. I shall one day crave
+permission to read it to you.”
+
+“Read it right away,” said Boni, lighting his cigar.
+
+“You will be giving us pleasure,” added Joséphin Leclerc, Nicole
+Langelier, and M. Goubin.
+
+“I am not sure whether I have the manuscript with me,” replied
+Hippolyte Dufresne.
+
+With these words, he drew out of his pocket a roll of paper, and began
+to read what follows.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THROUGH THE HORN OR THE IVORY GATE
+
+
+“It was about one o’clock in the morning. Before retiring for the
+night, I opened the window and lit a cigarette. The hum of a motor-car
+scudding along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne broke the reigning
+silence. The trees were freshening the atmosphere by the swaying of
+their darkened tops. No buzzing insect, no living sound arose from
+the sterile soil of the city. The night was resplendent with stars.
+Their fires seemed, in the clearness of the air, more so than on other
+nights, of varied lines. The greater number blazed at white heat. Some
+there were, however, yellow and orange-tinted, similar to the flames
+of dying lamps. Several were blue, and I saw one of so pale a blue, so
+limpid, and so soft, that I could not avert my gaze from it. I regret
+being ignorant of its name, but I console myself with the thought that
+men do not give the stars their true names.
+
+“When I reflect that each one of these drops of light enlightens
+worlds, I ask myself whether, like our own sun, they do not shed their
+rays on sufferings without end, and whether pain does not penetrate the
+utmost recesses of heaven. We can only judge the other worlds by our
+own. We know of life only the forms which it assumes upon the earth,
+and if we suppose that our planet is one of the least good, we have
+no reason for believing that all goes rightly in the others, nor that
+fortunate is he who is born under the rays of Altair, Betelgeux, or
+the fiery Sirius, when we know what a grievous affair it is to open
+our eyes on earth to the light of our old Sun. It is not that I find
+mine an unhappy fate, when compared with that of other men. I am not
+troubled with either wife or child. Love and sickness have left me
+unscathed. I am not very rich, and I do not go into society. I am thus
+to be numbered with the happy ones. Little joy, however, falls to their
+lot. What, then, can be the fate of the others? Men are really to be
+pitied. I impute no blame to nature for this; to hold a conversation
+with her is an impossibility; she is not intelligent. Nor will I lay
+the blame on society. There is no sense in opposing society to nature.
+It is as absurd to oppose the nature of men to the society of men, as
+to oppose the nature of ants to the society of ants, or the nature
+of herrings to the society of herrings. Animal societies are the
+necessary outcome of animal nature. The earth is the planet where one
+eats; ’tis the planet of hunger. The animals peopling it are naturally
+gluttonous and ferocious. Man, the most intelligent of them all, is
+alone avaricious. Avarice has so far been the fundamental virtue of
+human societies, and the moral masterpiece of nature. Were I a writer,
+I should indite the praise of avarice. It is true that my book would
+not reveal anything strikingly new. The subject has been dealt with a
+hundred times over by moralists and economists. Human societies have
+avarice and cruelty as their august basis.
+
+“It is thus in the other universes, in the numberless ethereal worlds?
+Do all the stars I see shed their light on men? Do people eat and
+inter-devour one another beyond the infinite. This doubt troubles me,
+and I am unable to contemplate without fright the fiery dew suspended
+in the heavens.
+
+“My thoughts imperceptibly become more lucid and gentle, and the idea
+of life, in its sensuality, violent and suave in turn, once more
+assumes a pleasurable aspect to my mind. I sometimes say to myself that
+life is beautiful. For, without such beauty, how could we discern its
+ugly features, and how believe that nature is bad, if at the same time
+we do not believe that it is good?
+
+“For a few minutes past, the phrases of a sonata of Mozart have hovered
+in the air, with their white columns and their garlands of roses. My
+neighbour is a pianist, who at nights plays Mozart and Gluck. I close
+the window, and while undressing, I am pondering over the doubtful
+pleasures which I may give myself the next day, when of a sudden I
+remember that for a week past I have been invited to lunch in the Bois
+de Boulogne; I have a vague idea that the invitation is for the coming
+day. To make sure of it, I look up the letter of invitation, which lies
+open on my table. Its contents are:
+
+                                      “‘16th September 1903.
+    “‘My dear old Dufresne,--
+        “‘Do me the pleasure of coming to luncheon with ... etc.
+    etc., next Saturday, the 23rd of September, 1903, etc. etc.’
+
+“It is for to-morrow.
+
+“I ring for my valet.
+
+“‘Jean, wake me to-morrow at nine o’clock.’
+
+“It happens precisely that to-morrow, the 23rd of September 1903,
+I shall enter upon my fortieth year. From what I have already seen
+in this world I can almost conceive what still remains for me to be
+seen. I can safely foretell the topics of to-morrow’s conversation
+at the restaurant in the Bois: ‘My automobile goes sixty kilomètres
+an hour.’--‘Blanche has a nasty disposition; but she is true to me;
+of that I feel sure.’--‘The Cabinet takes its pass-word from the
+Socialists.’--‘In the long run, the _petits-chevaux_ are a bore.
+However, there remains _baccara_.’--‘The workmen would be fools not to
+do as they please: the government always gives in to them.’--‘I will
+bet you that Epingle-d’Or will beat Ranavalo.’--‘What I personally
+cannot make out is why there is not some General to sweep away all
+those blackguards.’--‘What can you expect? France has been sold to
+England and Germany by the Jews.’ This is what I shall hear to-morrow.
+Here you have the social and political ideas of my friends, the
+great-grandsons of the bourgeois of July, princes of the factory and
+foundry, kings of the mine, who knew the way of mastering and enslaving
+the forces of the Revolution. My friends do not seem to me capable
+of preserving for any lengthy period the industrial empire and the
+political power bequeathed to them by their ancestors. My friends do
+not shine by their intelligence. They have not indulged in too much
+brainwork. No more have I. So far, I have not done much in this life.
+Like them, I am both idle and ignorant. I do not feel myself capable of
+achieving anything, and if I do not possess their vanity, if my brain
+is not stored with all the foolish ideas encumbering theirs; if, like
+them, I do not feel a hatred for and a fear of ideas, it is due to a
+peculiar circumstance of my life. My father, a big manufacturer and
+Conservative deputy, gave me, when I was seventeen, a young and timid
+“coach,” who spoke little, and who looked like a girl. While preparing
+me for my bachelorship, he was organising the social revolution in
+Europe. His gentleness was something refreshing. He has often been
+put in prison, and is now a deputy. I used to copy his addresses to
+the international proletariat. He made me read the whole Socialistic
+library. He taught me things all of which were not to be credited, but
+he opened my eyes to what was going on about me; he demonstrated to me
+that everything our society honours is contemptible, and that all that
+it despises is worthy of esteem. He led me into the paths of rebellion.
+In spite of his demonstrations, I came to the conclusion that falsehood
+should be respected and hypocrisy venerated as the two surest supports
+of the public order. I remained a Conservative, but my soul became
+saturated with disgust.
+
+“As I am falling asleep, a few almost imperceptible phrases of Mozart
+still reach my ears now and then, and make me dream of temples of
+marble standing amid a blue foliage.
+
+“It was broad daylight when I awoke. I dressed myself much more quickly
+than it is my wont. Unconscious of the cause for this haste, I found
+myself in the street without knowing how I had got there. What I now
+saw about me was to me the cause of a surprise which suspended all
+my faculties of reflection; and it is owing to this impossibility to
+reflect that my surprise did not increase, but remained stationary and
+calm. It would doubtless soon have become immoderate, and would have
+changed to stupor and terror, had I retained the use of my mind, so
+greatly was the scene which I was witnessing different from what it
+should be. Everything about me was to me new, unknown, and foreign.
+The trees and the lawns which I was in the habit of seeing daily had
+vanished. Where, on the day before, the tall grey buildings of the
+avenue stood out against the sky, there now stretched a fanciful line
+of brick cottages surrounded by gardens. I dared not look round to
+ascertain whether my own house still existed, and so I went straight
+towards the Porte Dauphine. I found it not. I took a street which was,
+so it seemed to me, the old road to Suresnes. The houses flanking
+it, of strange style and new form, too small to be occupied by rich
+people, were nevertheless embellished with pictures, sculptures, and
+brilliant potteries. A covered terrace surmounted them. I followed
+this rural road, whose curves produced enchanting perspectives. It
+was crossed obliquely by other sinuous ways. Neither trains, nor
+automobiles, nor vehicles of any kind went by. Shadows flitted over
+the soil. I looked upwards and saw masses of huge birds and enormous
+fishes glide rapidly through the upper atmosphere, which seemed to
+be a combination of heaven and ocean. Near the Seine, the course of
+which was altered, I came across a crowd of men clad in short blouses
+knotted at the waist, and wearing long gaiters. To all appearance they
+were in their working clothes. But their gait was lighter and more
+elegant than that of our workmen. I noticed women among them. What had
+heretofore prevented my recognising them as such was that they were
+dressed like the men, that they had long and straight legs, and, so it
+seemed to me, the narrow hips of American women. Although these folk
+did not present a savage appearance, I looked at them with fright.
+They presented to my gaze a more foreign appearance than any of the
+numerous strangers I had so far met upon the earth. In order to avoid
+seeing another human face, I turned down a deserted lane. Very soon I
+came to a circus planted with masts from which flew crimson oriflammes
+bearing in letters of gold the words: EUROPEAN FEDERATION. Placards
+in large frames ornamented with emblems of peace hung at the foot of
+the masts. They embodied announcements regarding popular festivals,
+legal injunctions, and works of public interest. In addition to balloon
+time-tables was a chart of the atmospheric currents drawn on the 28th
+of June of the year 220 of the Federation of Nations. All these texts
+were printed in characters new to me, and in a language of which I did
+not understand all the words. The while I was attempting to decipher
+them, the shadows of the countless machines cleaving the air flitted
+across my vision. Once more did I gaze upwards, and in this sky altered
+beyond recognition, more densely populated than the earth, cloven by
+rudders and threshed by screws, towards which a circle of smoke rose
+from the horizon, I perceived the sun. I felt like crying on seeing
+it. It was the only familiar figure which I had come across since
+morning. From its altitude I judged that it was about ten o’clock of
+the forenoon. Of a sudden I was surrounded by a second crowd of men
+and women, similar in appearance and in costume to the first. I was
+confirmed in the impression that the women, although some of them were
+very plump, others very skinny, and many beggared description, were
+on the whole androgynous in appearance. The crowd went its way. The
+open space once more was desert, just as our suburban quarters,
+which only come to life on the exodus from the workshops. I remained
+behind in front of the placards and read once more the date--the
+28th of June of the year 220 of the European Federation. What did it
+mean! A proclamation by the Federal Committee, on the occasion of
+the festival of the Earth, furnished me with timely and useful data
+for comprehension of that date. This is what I read: ‘Comrades, you
+are aware how, in the last year of the twentieth century, the old
+order collapsed in a fearful cataclysm, and how, after fifty years of
+anarchy, the federation of the peoples of Europe was organised....”
+The year 220 of the federation of peoples was therefore the year 2270
+of the Christian Era; this was certainly a fact which remained to be
+explained. How came it that of a sudden I found myself transported to
+the year 2270?
+
+“I mused over the circumstance as I strolled at haphazard.
+
+“‘I have not, as far as I know,’ I said to myself, ‘been preserved
+for so many years in the mummy state, like Colonel Fougas. I have
+not driven the machine with which Mr. H. G. Wells explores time. And
+if, following the example of William Morris, I have, while asleep,
+skipped three and a half centuries, I am unaware of the fact, since,
+when dreaming, one does not know that one is doing so. I am utterly
+convinced that I am not asleep.’
+
+“While indulging in these musings and others not worth recording,
+I was following a long street bordered with railings behind which
+pink-hued houses of various styles, but all equally small, smilingly
+peeped through the foliage. At times I perceived huge circuses of
+steel standing out in the landscape, and crowned with flames and
+smoke. Terror planed over these regions to which no name can be
+given, while the vibrating rush of air caused by the rapid flight of
+the machines resounded painfully through my brain. The street led to
+a meadow studded with clumps of trees and intersected by rivulets.
+Cows were pasturing in it. Just as my eyes were feasting upon the
+freshness of the scene I fancied I saw in front of me shadows flitting
+along a smooth and straight road. The whirlwind engendered by them,
+as they passed me, fanned my cheeks. I saw that they were trams and
+automobiles, real transparencies in their rapidity.
+
+“I crossed the road by a foot-bridge, and for a long time I sauntered
+through small meadows and woodlands. I thought I was in the open
+country, when I discovered an extensive frontage of resplendent
+houses bordering on the park. Soon, I found myself opposite a palace
+of an airy style of architecture. A sculptured and painted frieze,
+representing a largely attended feast, stretched across the vast
+façade. I perceived, through the panes of the bay-windows, men and
+women seated in a large and bright room around long marble tables,
+laden with prettily painted potteries. I entered, under the impression
+that this was a restaurant. I was not hungry, but weary, and the
+coolness of the room, artistically hung with garlands of fruit,
+appeared to me delicious. A man who stood by the door asked me for my
+voucher, and, as I showed embarrassment, he remarked:
+
+“‘I see, comrade, that you are not of these parts. How is it that you
+are travelling without vouchers! Very sorry, but it is impossible for
+me to admit you. Go and seek the delegate who hires journeymen; or, if
+you are too weak to work, address yourself to the delegate who attends
+to those who need succour.’
+
+“I informed him that I was nowise unfit for work, and drew away. A
+stout fellow, who was picking his teeth, said to me obligingly:
+
+“‘Comrade, you need not go to the delegate who engages journeymen. I am
+the delegate attached to the bakery of the section. We are one comrade
+short. Come along with me. You shall be put to work at once.’
+
+“I thanked the corpulent comrade, assured him of my willingness,
+pointing out, however, that I was not a baker.
+
+“He looked at me with some surprise, and told me that he could see I
+enjoyed a joke.
+
+“I followed him. We stopped in front of an immense cast-iron building
+having a monumental gateway, on the pediment of which a couple of
+bronze giants were resting on their elbows--the Sower and the Reaper.
+Their bodies expressed strength unstrained. A calm pride irradiated
+their faces, and they carried high their heads; in this, greatly
+dissimilar to the fierce-looking workers of the Flemish Constantin
+Meunier. We entered a room forty mètres in height, wherein, amid clouds
+of a light whitish dust, machinery was working with a sonorous and calm
+hum. Under the metallic dome, bags tendered themselves spontaneously
+to the knife which disembowelled them; the flour which escaped from
+them dropped into troughs where powerful hands of steel kneaded it
+into dough which flowed into moulds, which when full hastened to put
+themselves of their own accord into an oven as capacious and deep as
+a tunnel. Five or six men at most, motionless amid all this motion,
+supervised the labour of the machinery.
+
+“‘’Tis an old bakery,’ said my companion. ‘It hardly produces more than
+eighty thousand loaves a day, and its too weak machines employ too many
+hands. It matters little. Come up to the place where the goods arrive.’
+
+“I did not have the time to ask for a more explicit command. A lift
+had deposited me on the platform. Hardly had I reached it, when a kind
+of flying whale alighted close to me and unloaded a number of sacks.
+No human being was aboard this machine. Other flying whales brought
+more sacks which they unloaded, and which offered themselves up in
+succession to the knife which ripped them open. The screws revolved,
+and the rudder did its work. There was no one at the helm, nobody
+aboard the machine. I could hear in the distance the slight hum of
+a wasp flying, and then the thing grew with astounding rapidity. It
+seemed quite sure of itself, but my ignorance as to what would happen,
+should it perchance go wrong, caused me to shudder. I was several times
+tempted to ask to be allowed to go down again. A false shame prevented
+me. I stood my ground. The sun was disappearing on the horizon, and it
+was about five o’clock when the lift came up for me. The day’s work was
+over. I was given a voucher for board and lodging.
+
+“The rotund comrade remarked to me:
+
+“‘You must be hungry. You may, if you wish, take your evening meal at
+the public table. If you prefer eating by yourself in your own room,
+you may likewise do so. If you prefer supping at my place, together
+with a few comrades, say so at once. I am going to telephone to the
+culinary workshop that your rations be sent to you. I am telling you
+all this in order to set you at ease, for you seem like a fish out of
+water. You have no doubt come from afar. You do not look as if you
+could take care of yourself. To-day, your task has been an easy one.
+Do not, however, imagine that one’s livelihood is earned every day as
+cheaply as that. If the Ƶ-rays which directed the balloons had worked
+badly, as will sometimes happen, your task would not have been so easy.
+What is your particular line, and where do you come from?’
+
+“These questions embarrassed me greatly. I could not tell him the
+truth. I could not inform him that I was a bourgeois, and that I had
+come from the twentieth century. He would have thought me crazy. I
+replied in a vague and embarrassed manner that I had no trade, and that
+I came from far, from very far.
+
+“He smiled, and said:
+
+“‘I understand. You dare not admit it. You come from the United States
+of Africa. You are not the only European who has thus given us the
+slip. But nearly all these deserters end by coming back to us.’
+
+“I answered not a word, and my silence led him to believe that he had
+guessed aright. He renewed his invitation to supper, and asked me my
+name. I informed him that I was known as Hippolyte Dufresne. He seemed
+surprised at my having two names.
+
+“‘My name is Michel,’ he said.
+
+“Then, after a minute inspection of my straw hat, my jacket, my shoes,
+and the rest of my costume, which was no doubt somewhat dusty, but of a
+good cut, for after all I do not have my clothes made by a tailor who
+acts as hall-porter in the Rue des Acacias, he continued:
+
+“‘Hippolyte, I see whence you have come. You have lived in the black
+provinces. Nowadays there are only Zulus and Basutos to weave cloth so
+badly, to give so grotesque a shape to a suit, to make such ill-shapen
+footgear, and to stiffen linen with starch. It is only among them that
+you can have learnt to shave off your beard, while preserving on your
+face a moustache, and two little whiskers. This custom of scissoring
+the hair of the face, so as to form figures and ornaments, is the last
+word of tattooing, nowadays in vogue only among the Basutos and Zulus.
+These black provinces of the United States of Africa are wallowing in a
+state of barbarism resembling in many aspects the state of France three
+or four hundred years ago.’
+
+“I accepted Michel’s invitation.
+
+“‘I live quite close to here, in Sologne,’ he said. ‘My aeroplane scuds
+along fairly well. We shall soon be there.’
+
+“He made me take a seat under the belly of a huge mechanical bird, and
+we were soon cleaving the air so rapidly that I lost breath. The aspect
+of the countryside was vastly different from the one known to me. All
+the roads were bordered with houses; countless canals intersected the
+fields with their silvery lines. As I sat wrapt in admiration, Michel
+remarked to me:
+
+“‘The land is fairly well exploited, and cultivation is “intense,” as
+they say, since chemists are themselves agriculturists. One has tried
+one’s best, and one has worked hard for the past three hundred years.
+The fact is that to make collectivism a reality it has been necessary
+to compel the soil to return four or five times more than it returned
+in the days of capitalistic anarchy. You, who have lived among the
+Zulus and Basutos, are aware that the necessaries of life are so scarce
+with them that were they to be divided among all it would amount to
+sharing poverty and not wealth. The super-abundant production which
+we have attained to is more especially due to the progress made by
+science. The almost total suppression of the urban classes has also
+been of great advantage to agriculture. The shopkeepers and the clerks
+have gone, some to the factory, others to the field.’
+
+“‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘You have suppressed the cities! What has become
+of Paris?’
+
+“‘Hardly any one lives there now,’ replied Michel. ‘The greater part
+of those hideous and insanitary five-storied houses, wherein dwelt
+the citizens of the closed era, have fallen in ruins, and have been
+suffered to remain in that condition. House-building was very poor in
+the twentieth century of that unhappy era. We have preserved some of
+the older and better constructed buildings and converted them into
+museums. We possess a large number of museums and libraries: it is
+there we seek instruction. We have also kept a portion of the remains
+of the Hôtel de Ville. It was an ugly and fragile building, but great
+things were carried out within its precincts. As we no longer have
+tribunals, commerce, and armies, we no longer have cities, so to
+speak. Nevertheless, the density of the population is much greater on
+certain points than on others, and in spite of the rapidity of means of
+communication, the mining and metallurgic centres are densely peopled.’
+
+“‘What is that you say?’ I asked him. ‘You have done away with the
+courts of law? Have you then suppressed crime and misdemeanour?’
+
+“‘Crime will last as long as old and gloomy humanity. But, the number
+of criminals has diminished with the number of the wretched. The
+suburbs of the great cities were the feeding-grounds of crime; we no
+longer have big cities. The wireless telephone makes the highways safe
+day and night. We are all provided with electric means of defence.
+As to misdemeanours, they were rather the result of the scruples of
+the judges than of the perversity of the accused. Now that we no
+longer possess lawyers and judges, and that justice is administered by
+citizens summoned in rotation, many misdemeanours have disappeared,
+doubtless because it is impossible to recognise them as such.’
+
+“In this fashion did Michel discourse while steering his aeroplane. I
+am recording the meaning of his words as exactly as I can. I regret my
+inability, owing to a lack of memory, and also from fear of not making
+myself understood, to reproduce his language in all its expressiveness
+and its movement. The baker and his contemporaries spoke a language
+astonishing me at first by the novelty of its vocabulary and syntax,
+and especially by its pithy and flowing construction.
+
+“Michel came to ground on the terrace of a modest but pleasing dwelling.
+
+“‘We have arrived,’ he said; ‘’tis here that I live. You will sup with
+comrades who, like myself, take an interest in statistics.’
+
+“‘What! You a statistician! I thought you were a baker.
+
+“‘I am a baker, six hours of the day. This is the duration of the day’s
+work as determined for nearly a century by the Federal Committee. The
+rest of the time I give up to statistical labours. It is the science
+which has stepped into history’s shoes. The historians of old related
+the brilliant deeds of the few. Ours register all that is produced and
+consumed.’
+
+“After having conducted me to a hydrotherapic closet established on
+the roof, Michel led me down-stairs to the dining-room lit up by
+electricity, entirely white, and ornamented only with a sculptured
+frieze of strawberry plants in bloom. A table in painted pottery was
+covered with dishes with a metallic glaze. Three persons sat at it.
+Michel named them to me.
+
+“‘Morin, Perceval, Chéron.’
+
+“These three individuals were all clad alike in rough-spun jackets,
+velvet breeches, and grey stockings. Morin wore a long white beard;
+Chéron’s and Perceval’s faces were callow. Their short hair and more
+especially the frankness of their looks gave them the appearance of
+young lads. Yet I felt sure that they were women. Perceval seemed to me
+rather pretty, although she was no longer very young. I thought Chéron
+altogether charming. Michel introduced me:
+
+“‘I have brought comrade Hippolyte, who also calls himself Dufresne, to
+meet you; he has lived among the half-breeds, in the black provinces
+of the United States of Africa. He could not get any dinner at eleven
+o’clock, and so he must have an appetite.’
+
+“I was indeed hungry. They helped me to tiny bits of food cut into
+squares, which were not unpleasant to the taste, however new to me. A
+variety of cheeses were on the table. Morin poured me out a glass of
+light beer, and informed me that I could drink to my heart’s content,
+as it did not contain any alcohol.
+
+“‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I am glad to see that you pay attention to
+the evils of alcohol.’
+
+“‘They have almost ceased to exist,’ answered Morin. ‘We succeeded in
+suppressing alcoholism before the end of the closed era. It would have
+otherwise been impossible to establish the new _régime_. An alcoholic
+proletariat is incapable of emancipation.’
+
+“‘Have you not also,’ I inquired, while tasting a strangely carved bit
+of food--‘have you not also perfected food?’
+
+“‘Comrade,’ replied Perceval, ‘you doubtless refer to chemical
+alimentation. So far, it has not made any great strides. ’Tis in
+vain that we send our chemists as delegates into the kitchen....
+Their tabloids are of no good. With the exception that we know how
+to compound properly caloric and nutritious foods, we feed almost as
+coarsely as the men of the closed era, and we enjoy it just as much.’
+
+“‘Our scientists,’ remarked Michel, ‘are seeking to establish a
+rational system of food.’
+
+“‘That’s childishness,’ said the young female Chéron. ‘No good result
+will be reached, as long as the big intestine, a useless and harmful
+organ, and the seat of microbian infection, has not been removed....
+This will come in time.’
+
+“‘In what way?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Simply by ablation. And this suppression, the result, in the first
+place, of an operation upon a sufficient number of individuals, will
+tend to establish itself by heredity, and will later on be common to
+the whole race.’
+
+“These people treated me humanely and conversed obligingly with me. But
+it was difficult for me to chime in with their manners and their ideas,
+while I noticed that I nowise interested them, and that they felt an
+absolute indifference towards my modes of thought. The more I showed
+them courtesies, the more I alienated their sympathies. Following
+upon my addressing a few compliments, albeit discreet and sincere, to
+Chéron, she no longer even deigned to look at me.
+
+“The meal over, addressing myself to Morin, who seemed to me
+intelligent and gentle, I said to him with a sincerity which indeed
+stirred me deeply:
+
+“‘Monsieur Morin, I am ignorant of all things, and I am suffering
+cruelly because of my lack of knowledge. I repeat to you that I come
+from far, from very far. Tell me, I entreat you, how the European
+Federation came into existence, and explain to me the present social
+system.’
+
+“Old Morin protested:
+
+“‘You are asking me for the history of three centuries. It would take
+me weeks, nay months. Moreover, there are many things I could not
+teach you, as I do not know them myself.’
+
+“I thereupon entreated him to lay before me a very concise summary, as
+is done in the case of school children.
+
+“Morin, flinging himself back in his arm-chair, began:
+
+“‘To ascertain how the present society was constituted, it is necessary
+to go back far into the past.
+
+“‘The crowning achievement of the twentieth century was the extinction
+of war.
+
+“‘The arbitration Congress of The Hague, instituted in the middle of
+barbarism, did not to any degree contribute towards the maintenance of
+peace. But another more efficacious institution came into existence at
+that time. Groups of deputies were formed in the various Parliaments,
+who entered into communication with one another, and who in course of
+time came to deliberate in common on international questions. Giving
+expression as they did to the peaceful aspirations of a growing crowd
+of electors, their resolutions carried great weight, and supplied food
+for reflection to the governments, the most absolute of which, if one
+sets aside Russia, had at that time learnt to reckon with popular
+sentiment. What surprises us nowadays is that no one discerned in
+those meetings of deputies come together from all countries the first
+attempt at an international parliament.
+
+“‘But then the party of violence was still powerful in the several
+empires, and even in the French Republic. And if the danger of the
+old-time dynastic and diplomatic wars determined upon at a green-baized
+table for the purpose of maintaining what was known as the European
+equilibrium was averted for all time, it was still to be dreaded,
+considering the unsatisfactory industrial condition affecting Europe,
+that the conflicting industrial interests might bring about some
+terrible conflagration.
+
+“‘The imperfectly organised proletariat, as yet without the
+consciousness of its strength, did not put an end to armed struggles
+between nations, but it limited their frequency and duration.
+
+“‘The last wars were the outcome of that mad fury of the old world
+known as the colonial policy. English, Russians, Germans, French, and
+Americans joined in rabid competition, in Asia and Africa, for the
+possession of zones of influence, as they said, wherein they could, on
+the basis of pillage and massacres, establish economic relations with
+the aborigines. They destroyed everything they could destroy in those
+two countries. Then followed the inevitable. The impoverished colonies
+which were expensive were retained and the prosperous ones lost. But
+mankind had to reckon, in Asia, with a small heroic nation, taught
+by Europe, which made itself respected by her. By so doing, Japan, in
+barbarous times, rendered a great service to humanity.
+
+“‘When at last that detestable period of colonisation came to an end,
+no further was there any war. Still the States continued keeping up
+armies.
+
+“‘Having so far explained matters, I shall proceed to lay before you,
+pursuant to your request, the origins of present-day society. It
+issued from the one preceding it. In moral just as in individual life
+forms generate one another. Capitalistic naturally enough produced
+collectivist society. At the commencement of the twentieth century
+of the closed era, a memorable industrial evolution took place. The
+slender production of small artisans whose all were their tools was
+followed by a great production financially supported by a new agent of
+marvellous power--capital. Here was a great social progress.’
+
+“‘What was a great social step in advance?’ I asked.
+
+“‘The capitalistic _régime_,’ replied Morin. ‘It brought humanity an
+untold source of wealth. By grouping the workers in considerable masses
+and multiplying their numbers it created the proletariat. By making the
+workers an immense State within the State it paved the way for their
+emancipation, and furnished them with the means of conquering power.
+
+“‘This _régime_, however, which was to be productive of such happy
+results in the future, was execrated by the workers, in whose ranks it
+made countless victims.
+
+“‘There exists no social benefit which has not been purchased at the
+cost of blood and tears. Moreover, this _régime_ which had enriched the
+whole world came within an ace of ruining it. After having increased
+production to a considerable extent, it failed in its endeavours to
+regulate it, and struggled hopelessly in the toils of inextricable
+difficulties.
+
+“‘You are not totally ignorant, comrade, of the economic disturbances
+which filled the twentieth century. During the last hundred years
+of the capitalistic domination, the disorder of production and the
+delirium of competition piled up disasters high. The capitalists and
+the masters vainly attempted, by means of gigantic combinations, to
+regulate production and to annihilate competition. Their ill-conceived
+undertakings were engulfed in an abyss of gigantic catastrophes.
+During those anarchical days, the fight between classes was blind
+and terrible. The proletariat, overwhelmed in the same ratio by its
+victories and its defeats, overwhelmed by the ruins of the edifice
+which it was pulling down on its own head, torn by fearful internal
+struggles, casting aside in its blind violence its best leaders and
+most trustworthy friends, fought on without system and in the dark.
+It was, however, continually winning some advantage: an increase of
+wages, shorter hours of work, a growing freedom of organisation and
+of propaganda, the conquest of public power, and making progress in
+the dumfounded public mind. It was looked upon as wrecked through its
+divisions and mistakes. But all great parties are at odds, and all
+commit blunders. The proletariat had on its side the force of events.
+Towards the end of the century it attained the degree of well-being
+which opens the way to better things. Comrade, a party must have
+within itself a certain strength in order to accomplish a revolution
+favourable to its interests. Towards the end of the twentieth century
+of the closed era the general situation had become most favourable
+to the developments of socialism. The standing armies, more and more
+reduced during the course of the century, were abolished, following
+upon a desperate opposition of the powers that were, and of the
+bourgeoisie owning all things, by Chambers born of universal suffrage
+under the fiery pressure of the people of the cities and of the
+country. For a long time past already, the chiefs of State had retained
+their armies, less in view of a war which they no longer dreaded or
+could hope for, than to hold in check the multitude of proletaries
+at home. In the end, they yielded. Militias imbued with socialistic
+ideas supplanted regular armies. It was not without good cause that
+the governments showed opposition. No longer defended by guns and
+rifles, the monarchical systems succumbed in succession, and Republican
+Government stepped into their places. Alone, England, who had
+previously established a _régime_ considered endurable by the workers,
+and Russia, who had remained Imperialist and theocratic, stood outside
+the pale of this great movement. It was feared that the Czar, who felt
+towards republican Europe the sentiments which the French Revolution
+had inspired the great Catherine with, might raise armies to combat
+it. But his government had reached a degree of weakness and imbecility
+which only an absolute monarchy can attain. The Russian proletariat,
+joining hands with the intellectuals, rose in revolt, and after an
+awful succession of outrages and massacres, power passed into the hands
+of the revolutionaries, who established the representative system.
+
+“‘Telegraphy and wireless telephony were then in use from one end of
+Europe to the other, and so easy of use that the poorest of individuals
+could speak, whenever he wished, and give utterance to whatever he
+saw fit to a fellow creature living in any corner of the globe.
+Collectivist ideas rained down on Moscow. The Russian peasants could
+listen in their beds to the speeches of their comrades of Marseilles
+and Berlin. Simultaneously, the approximate steering of balloons and
+the exact course of flying-machines came into practical use. The result
+was the abolition of frontiers. This was the most critical moment of
+all. The patriotic instinct took a fresh life in the hearts of the
+nations so near uniting and fusing into one boundless humanity. In
+all countries, and at one and the same time, the nationalist faith,
+rekindled, emitted flashes of light. As there were no longer any kings,
+armies, or aristocracy, this great movement assumed a tumultuous and
+popular character. The French Republic, the German Republic, the
+Hungarian Republic, the Roman Republic, the Italian Republic, and even
+the Swiss and Belgian Republics, each expressed by a unanimous vote
+of their respective Parliaments, and at largely attended meetings,
+the solemn resolve to defend against all foreign aggression national
+territory and industry. Stringent laws were promulgated repressing
+the smuggling by flying-machines, and regulating severely the use
+of wireless telegraphy. The militia was everywhere reorganised and
+brought back to the old type of standing armies. Once more did the
+former uniforms, boots, dolmans, and generals’ plumes make their
+appearance. Fur busbies were anew welcomed with the applause of Paris.
+All the shopkeepers and a portion of the workmen donned the tricolour
+cockade. In all foundry districts, cannon and armour-plates were once
+more forged. Terrible wars were anticipated. This mad spurt lasted
+three years, without matters coming to a clash, and then it slackened
+imperceptibly. The militias gradually recovered the bourgeois aspect
+and feeling. The union of nations, which had seemed postponed to a
+fabled remoteness, was near at hand. Pacific efforts were developing
+day by day; collectivists were gradually achieving the conquest of
+society. The day came at last when the defeated capitalists abandoned
+the field to them.’
+
+“‘What a change!’ I exclaimed. ‘History cannot show another example of
+such a revolution.’
+
+“‘You may well imagine, comrade,’ resumed Morin, ‘that collectivism
+did not make its appearance till the appointed hour. The Socialists
+could not have suppressed capital and individual property had not those
+two forms of wealth been already all but destroyed _de facto_ by the
+efforts of the proletariat, and still more so by the fresh developments
+of science and industry.
+
+“‘It had indeed been thought that Germany would be the first
+collectivist State; the Labour Party had there been organised for
+about one hundred years, and it was everywhere said: ‘Socialism is a
+thing German?’ Still, France, less well prepared, got the start of
+her. The social revolution broke out in the first place at Lyons,
+Lille, and Marseilles, to the strains of _l’Internationale_. Paris held
+aloof for a fortnight, and then hoisted the red flag. It was only on
+the following day that Berlin proclaimed the collectivist state. The
+triumph of socialism had as a result the union of nations.
+
+“‘The delegates of all the European Republics, sitting in Brussels,
+proclaimed the Constitution of the United States of Europe.
+
+“‘England refused to form part of it, but she declared herself its
+ally. While having become socialistic, she had retained her king,
+her lords, and even the wigs of her judges. Socialism was at that
+time supreme ruler in Oceania, China, Japan, and in a portion of
+the vast Russian Republic. Black Africa, which had entered upon the
+capitalistic phase, formed a confederation of little homogeneity. The
+American Union had a while ago renounced mercantile militarism. The
+condition of the world was consequently favourable, upon the whole,
+to the free development of the United States of Europe. Nevertheless,
+this union, welcomed with delirious joy, was followed for the space
+of half a century by economic disturbances and social miseries. There
+were no longer any armies, and hardly any militias; in consequence
+of not being constricted, popular movements did not take the form of
+violent outbreaks. But the inexperience or the ill-will of the local
+governments was fostering a ruinous state of disorder.
+
+“‘Fifty years after the constitution of the States, the disappointments
+were so cruel, and the difficulties seemed to such a degree
+insurmountable, that the most optimistic spirits were beginning
+to despair. Smothered crackings foretold in all directions the
+dismemberment of the Union. It was then that the dictatorship of a
+committee composed of fourteen workmen put an end to anarchy, and
+organised the Federation of European nations as it exists to-day. There
+are those who say that the Fourteen displayed unparalleled genius and
+relentless energy; others claim that they were mediocrities terrified
+and influenced by the stress of necessity, and that they presided as
+if in spite of themselves over the spontaneous organisation of the
+new social forces. It is at all events certain that they did not go
+against the tide of events. The organisation which they established, or
+witnessed the establishment of, still subsists almost in its entirety.
+The production and consumption of goods are nowadays carried out, to
+all purposes, according to the rules laid down in those days. The new
+era justly dates from that time.’
+
+“Morin then expounded to me most succinctly the principles of modern
+society.
+
+“‘It rests,’ said he, ‘on the total suppression of individual
+property.’
+
+“‘Is not this intolerable to you?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Why should we find it unendurable, Hippolyte? In Europe, formerly,
+the State collected the taxes. It disposed of resources proper to it.
+Nowadays it can be said with an equal degree of truth that it possesses
+everything, while possessing nothing. It is still more exact to say
+that it is we who own all things, since the State is not a thing apart
+from us, and is merely the expression of collectiveness.’
+
+“‘But,’ I asked, ‘do you not possess anything proper to yourself? Not
+even the plates out of which you eat, nor your bed, your bed-sheets,
+your clothes?’
+
+“Morin smiled at my question.
+
+“‘You are a deal more simple than I dreamt, Hippolyte. What! You
+imagine that we are not the owners of our personal property. What can
+well be your idea of our tastes, our instincts, our needs, and our mode
+of living? Do you take us for monks, as was said in the olden days, for
+men destitute of all individual character and incapable of affixing
+a personal impress on our surroundings? You are mistaken, my friend,
+altogether mistaken. We hold as our own the objects destined to our use
+and comfort, and we feel more attached to them than were the bourgeois
+of the closed era to their knick-knacks, for our taste is keener, and
+we possess a livelier sentiment of form. All our comrades of some
+refinement own works of art, and take great pride in them. Chéron has
+in her home paintings which are her delight, and she would take it
+amiss were the Federal Committee to contest with her the possession of
+them. Personally, I preserve in that closet some ancient drawings, the
+almost complete work of Steinlen, one of the most highly prized artists
+of the closed era. Neither silver nor gold would tempt me to part with
+them.
+
+“‘Whence have you come, Hippolyte? You are told that our society is
+based on the total suppression of individual property, and you get into
+your head that such suppression covers goods and chattels, and articles
+in daily use. But, you simple-minded fellow, the individual property
+totally suppressed by us is the ownership of the means of production,
+soil, canals, roads, mines, material, plant, &c. It does not affect
+lamps and arm-chairs. What we have done away with is the possibility of
+diverting to the benefit of an individual or of a group of individuals
+the fruits of labour; ’tis not the natural and harmless possession of
+the beloved chattels about us.’
+
+“Morin next enlightened me as to the distribution of intellectual and
+manual labours among all the members of the community, in conformity
+with their aptitudes.
+
+“‘Collectivist society,’ he went on to say, ‘differs not only from
+capitalistic society in the fact that in the former everybody works.
+During the closed era, the people who toiled not were in great numbers;
+still, they constituted the minority. Our society differs more
+especially from the former in that labour was not properly classified,
+and that many useless tasks were performed. The workers produced
+without systematic order, method, and concerted action. The cities
+were full of officials, magistrates, merchants, and clerks, who worked
+without producing. There were also the soldiers. The fruits of labour
+were not properly distributed. The customs and tariffs established
+for the purpose of remedying the evil merely aggravated matters. All
+were suffering. Production and consumption are now minutely regulated.
+Lastly, our society differs from the old one in that we enjoy all the
+benefits derived from machinery, the use of which, in the capitalistic
+age, was so frequently disastrous for the workers.’
+
+“I asked him how it had been possible to constitute a society composed
+wholly of workmen.
+
+“Morin pointed out to me that man’s aptitude for work is general, and
+that it constitutes one of the essential characteristics of the race.
+
+“‘In barbarian times,’ he said, ‘and right until the end of the closed
+era, the aristocratic and wealthy classes always showed a preference
+for manual labour. They put their intellectual faculties to an
+infinitesimal use, and in exceptional instances at that. Their tastes
+always inclined towards such occupations as the chase and war, wherein
+the body plays a greater part than the mind. They rode, drove, fenced,
+and practised pistol-shooting. It may therefore be said of them that
+they worked with their hands. Their work was either sterile or harmful,
+for the reason that a certain prejudice forbade them to engage in any
+useful or beneficent work, and also, because in their day, useful work
+was most often carried out under ignoble and disgusting conditions. It
+did not prove so very difficult to impart a taste for work to every one
+by reinstating it in a position of honour. The men of the barbaric ages
+took pride in carrying a gun or wearing a sword. The men of to-day are
+proud of handling a spade or a hammer. Humanity rests on a foundation
+which undergoes but little change.’
+
+“Morin having told me that the very memory of all monetary circulation
+had become lost, I asked him:
+
+“‘How then do you carry on business without cash payments?’
+
+“‘We exchange products by means of vouchers similar to those just given
+you, comrade, and they correspond to the hours of labour performed
+by us. The value of the products is computed by the length of time
+their production has taken. Bread, meat, beer, clothes, an aeroplane,
+represent _x_ hours, _x_ days of labour. From each of these vouchers,
+collectivism, or, as it was styled formerly, the State, deducts a
+certain number of minutes for the purpose of allocating them to
+unproductive works, metallurgic and alimentary reserves, refuges and
+private asylums, and so forth.’
+
+“‘These minutes,’ interjected Michel, ‘are continually increasing
+apace. The Federal Committee orders far too many great works, the
+burden of which is thus on our shoulders. The reserve stocks are far
+too considerable. The public warehouses are crowded to overflowing with
+riches of all sorts. ’Tis our minutes of labour which are entombed
+there. Many abuses are still in existence.’
+
+“‘No doubt,’ replied Morin, ‘there is room for improvement. The wealth
+of Europe, which has accrued through general methodical labour, is
+untold.’
+
+“I was curious to learn whether these folk had no other measurement of
+labour than the time required for its accomplishment, and whether in
+their case the day’s work of the navvy or of the journeyman tempering
+plaster ranked with that of the chemist or the surgeon. I put the
+question frankly.
+
+“‘What a silly question,’ exclaimed Perceval.
+
+“Nevertheless old Morin vouchsafed to enlighten me.
+
+“‘All works of study, of research, in fact all works contributing to
+render life better and more beautiful are encouraged in our workshops
+and laboratories. The collectivist State fosters the higher studies. To
+study is akin to producing, since nothing is produced without study.
+Study, just as much as work, entitles one to existence. Those who
+devote themselves to long and arduous research secure unto themselves
+a peaceful and respected existence. It takes a sculptor a fortnight
+to make the _maquette_ of a figure, but he has worked five years to
+learn modelling. Now the State has paid him for his _maquette_ during
+those five years. A chemist discovers in a few hours the particular
+properties of a body. But he has spent months in isolating this body,
+and years in fitting himself to become capable of such an undertaking.
+During the whole of that time he has lived at the expense of the State.
+A surgeon removes a tumour in ten minutes. This is the result of
+fifteen years of study and practice. He has, as a consequence, received
+vouchers from the State for fifteen years past. Every man who gives in
+a month, in an hour, in a few minutes, the product of his whole life,
+is merely repaying in a lump sum what collectivism has given him day by
+day.’
+
+“‘Without reckoning,’ said Perceval, ‘that our great intellectuals,
+our surgeons, our lady doctors, our chemists, know full well how to
+derive profit from their works and discoveries, and to add beyond
+measure to their enjoyments. They cause to be allotted to themselves
+aerial machines of 60 h.p., palaces, gardens, and immense parks. They
+are, for the greater part, individuals keenly alive to laying hold of
+the world’s goods, and lead a more splendid and more copious existence
+than the bourgeois of the closed era. The worst of it is that the
+majority of them are stupid fools who should be recruited for work at
+the flour-mills, like Hippolyte.’
+
+“I bowed my thanks. Michel approved Perceval, and bitterly lamented the
+accommodating mind of the State in its system of fattening chemists at
+the expense of the other workers.
+
+“I asked whether the negotiation of the vouchers did not bring about a
+rise and fall.
+
+“‘Speculation in vouchers,’ replied Morin, ‘is prohibited. As a matter
+of fact, it cannot be prevented altogether. There are among us, just as
+formerly, avaricious and prodigal, laborious and idle, rich and poor,
+happy and miserable, contented and discontented men. Yet all manage to
+exist, and that is already something.’
+
+“I fell a-musing for a while; then I remarked:
+
+“‘Monsieur Morin, if one is to believe you, it seems to me that you
+have realised equality and fraternity, as much as possible. But, I
+fear that it is at the expense of liberty, which I have learnt to
+cherish as the best of things.’
+
+“Morin shrugged his shoulders, saying:
+
+“‘We have not established equality. We know what it means. We have
+secured a livelihood for all. We have placed labour on a pedestal of
+honour. After that, if the bricklayer thinks himself superior to the
+poet, and the poet to the bricklayer, ’tis their business. Every one
+of our workers imagines that his form of labour is the grandest in the
+world. The advantages of this idea are greater than the disadvantages.
+
+“‘Comrade Hippolyte, you seem to have delved deeply into the books
+of the nineteenth century of the closed era; their leaves are hardly
+turned nowadays: you speak their language, to us a foreign tongue.
+It is hard for us to realise nowadays that the bygone friends of the
+people should have adopted as their motto: _Liberty_, _Equality_,
+_Fraternity_. Liberty has no place in society, since it does not exist
+in nature. There is no free animal. It was said formerly that a man who
+obeyed the laws was free. This was childish. Moreover, so strange a
+use was made of the word liberty in the last days of the capitalistic
+anarchy that the word has ended in merely expressing the setting claim
+to privileges. The idea of equality is still less reasonable, and it
+is an unfortunate idea in that it presupposes a false ideal. We have
+not to seek whether men are equal among themselves. What we must see to
+is that each one shall supply his best and receive all necessaries of
+life. As to fraternity, we know only too well how brothers have acted
+towards brothers during the course of centuries. We do not pretend to
+say that men are bad. We do not say that they are good. They are what
+they are, but they live in peace, when there are no longer any reasons
+for them to fight one another. We have but a single word to express our
+social system. We say that we live in harmony. Now it is an assured
+fact that all human forces act in concert nowadays.’
+
+“‘In the centuries,’ I said to him, ‘of what you style the closed
+era, one preferred the possession of things to their enjoyment. I can
+conceive that, reversing the order of things, you prefer enjoyment to
+possession. But is it not distressing to you not to have any property
+to leave to your children?’
+
+“‘In capitalistic times,’ replied Morin with animation, ‘how many
+were there who left inheritances? One in a thousand; nay, one in ten
+thousand. Nor must it be forgotten that many generations did not enjoy
+the faculty of bequeathing. Be this as it may, the transmission of
+fortune through the medium of inheritances was perfectly conceivable
+when the family was in existence. But now....’
+
+“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘you have no family ties?’
+
+“My surprise, which I had not been able to conceal, seemed comical to
+the woman-comrade Chéron.
+
+“‘We are quite aware,’ she said to me, ‘that marriage exists among
+the Kaffirs. We European women do not bind ourselves by promises; or,
+if we make them, the law does not take cognisance of them. We are of
+opinion that the whole destiny of a human being should not hang on a
+word. Nevertheless, there survives a relic of the customs of the closed
+era. When a woman gives herself, she swears fidelity on the horns of
+the moon. In reality, neither the man nor the woman takes any binding
+engagement. Yet it is not of rare occurrence that their union endures
+as long as life. Neither of them would wish to be the object of a
+fidelity secured by means of an oath, instead of by physical and moral
+expediency. We owe nothing to anybody. Formerly, a man convinced a
+woman that she belonged to him. We are less simple-minded. We believe
+that a human being belongs to itself alone. We give ourselves when we
+please, and to whom we see fit.
+
+“‘Moreover, we feel no shame in yielding to desire. We are no
+hypocrites. Only four hundred years ago, physiology was a sealed book
+to men, and their ignorance was the cause of dire illusions and cruel
+deceptions. Hippolyte, whatever the Kaffirs may say, society must be
+subordinate to nature, and not, as too long has been the case, nature
+to society?’
+
+“Perceval, endorsing the speech of her comrade, added:
+
+“‘To show you how the sex question is regulated in our society, I must
+tell you, Hippolyte, that in many factories the recruiting delegate
+does not even inquire about one’s sex. The sex of an individual does
+not interest collectivism.’
+
+“‘But the children?’
+
+“‘Well? The children?’
+
+“‘Not having any family ideal, are they not neglected?’
+
+“‘Whence did you get such an idea? Maternal love is a most powerful
+instinct in woman. In the hideous society of the past, mothers were to
+be seen courting misery and shame, in order to bring up illegitimate
+offspring. Why should ours, exempt as they are from shame and misery,
+forsake their little ones? There are among us many good partners, and
+many good mothers. But there is a very large number, which increases
+apace, of women who dispense with men.’
+
+“Chéron made in this connection a somewhat strange remark.
+
+“‘We have in regard to sexual characteristics,’ she said, ‘notions
+undreamt of in the barbaric simplicity of the men of the closed era.
+False conclusions were for a long time drawn from the fact that there
+are two sexes, and two only. It was therefrom concluded that a woman
+is absolutely female, and a man absolutely male. In reality, it is not
+thus; there are women who are very much women, while others are very
+little so. These differences, formerly concealed by the costume and
+the mode of life, and disguised by prejudice, make themselves clearly
+manifest in our society. More than that, they become accentuated and
+more marked with each succeeding generation. Ever since women have
+worked like men, and acted and thought like them, many are to be found
+who resemble men. We may some day reach the point of creating neutrals,
+and produce female workers, as in the case of bees. It will prove a
+great benefit, for it will become possible to increase the quantity of
+work without increasing the population in a degree out of proportion to
+the necessaries of life. We entertain the same dread of a deficit in
+and a surplus of births.’
+
+“I thanked Perceval and Chéron for having kindly supplied me with
+information on so interesting a subject, and I inquired whether
+education was not neglected in collectivist society, and whether
+speculative science and the liberal arts still flourished.
+
+“The following is old Morin’s reply to my question:
+
+“‘Education, in all its degrees, is highly developed. The comrades all
+know something; they do not know the same things, nor have they learnt
+anything useless. No longer is any time lost in the study of law and
+theology. Each one selects from the arts and sciences what suits him.
+We still possess many ancient works, although the greater part of the
+works printed before the new era have perished. Books are still printed
+in greater quantity than ever. And yet typography is on the point of
+disappearing. Phonography will take its place. Poets and novelists are
+already being published phonographically, while in connection with
+theatrical plays, a most ingenious combination of the phono and the
+cinemato rendering both the voice and the play of the actors has been
+devised.’
+
+“‘You have then poets and playwrights?’
+
+“‘We not only have poets, but a poetry of our own. We are the first
+who have delimitated the domain of poetry. Previous to our time, many
+ideas which could have been better expressed in prose were expressed
+in verse. Narratives were unfolded in rhyme. This was a survival of
+the days when legislative enactments and recipes of rural economy
+were drawn up in measured terms. Nowadays poets merely sing delicate
+subjects which have no meaning, while their grammar and language are
+as proper to them as their rhythm and assonance. As to our stage, it
+is almost exclusively lyric. A precise knowledge of reality and a life
+void of violence have rendered us almost indifferent to drama and
+tragedy. The uniformity of the classes and the equality of the sexes
+have deprived the old comedy of nearly all its subject-matter. But
+never has music been so beautiful and so beloved. We especially admire
+the sonata and the symphony.
+
+“‘Our society is greatly predisposed in favour of the arts of design.
+Many prejudices harmful to painting have vanished. Our life is more
+limpid and more beautiful than the bourgeois life, and we have a
+vivid appreciation of form. Sculpture is in a still more flourishing
+condition than painting, ever since it has taken an intelligent part in
+the ornamentation of public buildings and private dwellings. Never was
+so much done towards the teaching of art. If you will but steer your
+aeroplane above one of our streets, you will be surprised at the number
+of schools and museums.’
+
+“‘To sum matters up, are you happy?’ I inquired.
+
+“Morin shook his head and replied:
+
+“‘It is not in human nature to enjoy perfect happiness. Happiness
+is not attainable without effort, and every effort brings with it
+fatigue and suffering. We have made life endurable to all. That is
+something. Our descendants will do better still. Our organisation is
+not immutable. Not fifty years ago, it was different from what it is
+to-day. Men endowed with subtile powers of observation believe that we
+are on the road to great changes. That may be. However, the forward
+steps in human civilisation will henceforth be harmonious and pacific.’
+
+“‘Do you not fear, on the contrary,’ I asked him, ‘that the
+civilisation with which you appear to be satisfied may be destroyed
+by an invasion of barbarians? There still remain in Asia and Africa,
+so you have told me, large black or yellow populations which have not
+entered into your concert. They have armies, while you have none. Were
+they to attack you...’
+
+“‘Our defence is assured. The Americans and the Australians alone could
+enter upon a struggle with us, for they are as learned as ourselves.
+But the ocean separates us and a community of interests makes us sure
+of their amity. As to the capitalistic negroes, they have not got any
+further than the steel cannon, fire-arms and all the old scrap-iron
+of the twentieth century. What could these ancient engines of war
+do against a discharge of Y-rays? Our frontiers are protected by
+electricity. A zone of lightning encircles the Federation. A little
+spectacled fellow is sitting I know not where, in front of a keyboard.
+He is our one and only soldier. He has but to touch a key in order to
+reduce to dust an army of 500,000 men.’
+
+“Morin ceased speaking for a moment; then he continued, speaking more
+deliberately:
+
+“‘Were our civilisation threatened, it would not be by any outside
+enemy. It would be by the enemies from within.’
+
+“‘There are such enemies, then?’
+
+“‘We have the anarchists. They are many, fiery, and intelligent. Our
+chemists and our professors of sciences and letters are almost to a man
+anarchists. They attribute to the regulation of labour and production
+the majority of the evils which still afflict society. They argue that
+humanity will not be happy except in the spontaneous harmony to be born
+of the total destruction of civilisation. They are dangerous. They
+would be still more so were we to repress them. To do this, however, we
+have neither the means nor the desire. We do not possess any power of
+coercion or repression, and we get along very well without it. In the
+barbaric ages, men nurtured great illusions in regard to the efficacy
+of penalties. Our fathers suppressed the judiciary system entirely.
+They no longer required it. With the suppression of private property,
+they simultaneously suppressed theft and swindling. Ever since we have
+carried electric protectors, assaults are no longer to be feared. Man
+has come to be respected by man. Crimes of passion are still and will
+ever be committed. However, such crimes as these, if left unpunished,
+become rarer. Our entire judiciary body is composed of elected
+arbitrators who try gratuitously all offences and disputes.’
+
+“‘I rose, and thanking my comrades for their kindness, I begged Morin
+the favour of putting one more question to him.
+
+“‘You no longer have any religion?’
+
+“‘Quite the contrary; we have a large number of religions, some of
+them somewhat novel. To mention France only, we have the religion
+of humanity, positivism, Christianity, and spiritualism. In some
+countries there are still some Catholics, but they are few and split up
+into sects, as the result of schisms which occurred in the twentieth
+century, when Church and State drifted apart. For a long time now there
+has not been any Pope.’
+
+“‘You are mistaken,’ said Michel. ‘There is still a Pope. It is by a
+mere chance that I know of him. He is Pius XXV., dyer, Via dell’ Orso,
+in Rome.’
+
+“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘the Pope is a dyer!’”
+
+“‘What is there surprising about that! He must perforce have a trade,
+just as everybody else.’
+
+“‘But his Church?’
+
+“‘He is recognised by a few thousands, in Europe.’
+
+“With these words, we parted. Michel informed me that I should find a
+lodging in the neighbourhood, and that Chéron would conduct me to it on
+her way home.
+
+“The night was illuminated with an opalescent light both powerful and
+soft. It gave the foliage the sheen of enamel. I walked by the side of
+Chéron.
+
+“I looked her over. Her flat-soled shoes gave firmness to her gait
+and balance to her body; although her male habiliments made her seem
+smaller than she was, and in spite of her having one hand in her
+pocket, her perfectly simple carriage did not lack dignity. She gazed
+freely to the right and left of her. She was the first woman in whom I
+had noticed the air of a curious and amused lounger. Her features, seen
+from under her tam-o’-shanter, were refined and strongly defined. She
+both irritated and charmed me. I was in dread that she might consider
+me stupid and ridiculous. It was, to say the least, plain that my
+personality inspired her with supreme indifference. Nevertheless, of
+a sudden she asked me what my trade might be. I answered at haphazard
+that I was an electrician.
+
+“‘So am I,’ she said.
+
+“I prudently put an end to the conversation.
+
+“Unheard-of sounds were filling the night air with their calm rhythmic
+noise, and I listened in affright to the respiration of the monstrous
+genius of this new world.
+
+“The more I looked at the female electrician, the more did I feel a
+desire for her, a desire fanned by a dash of antipathy.
+
+“‘So of course,’ I said to her of a sudden, ‘you have regulated love
+scientifically, and ’tis a matter which no longer causes any one
+uneasiness.’
+
+“‘You are mistaken,’ she replied. ‘We have naturally got beyond the mad
+imbecility of the closed era, and the whole domain of human physiology
+is henceforth freed from legal barbarisms and theological terrors. We
+are no longer the prey to an erroneous and cruel conception of duty.
+But the laws governing the attraction between body and body are still
+a mystery to us. The spirit of the species is what it ever was and
+ever shall be, violent and capricious. Now, just as formerly, instinct
+remains stronger than reason. Our superiority over the ancients lies
+less in the knowledge of it than in proclaiming it. We have within us a
+force capable of creating worlds, to wit, desire, and you would have us
+regulate it. ’Tis asking too much of us. We are no longer barbarians.
+We have not yet become wise. Collectivism altogether ignores all that
+appertains to sexual relations. These relations are what they may be,
+most often tolerable, rarely delicious, and at times horrible. But,
+comrade, do not imagine that love no longer troubles any one.’
+
+“I could not discuss such extraordinary ideas. I diverted the
+conversation to the temperament of women. Chéron informed me that there
+were three kinds, those who were amorously disposed, those prompted by
+curiosity, and the third, indifferent. I thereupon asked her to which
+class she belonged.
+
+“She looked at me somewhat haughtily and said:
+
+“‘There are also various kinds of men. First and foremost are the
+impertinent ones....’
+
+“Her reply caused her to appear far more contemporaneous than I had
+until then believed her to be. For that reason I began to speak to her
+the language used by me on similar occasions. After a few trifling and
+frivolous words I said to her:
+
+“‘Will you grant me a favour and tell me your first name?’
+
+“‘I have none?’
+
+“She perceived that this seemed to vex me, for she resumed with some
+show of pique:
+
+“‘Do you think that a woman must, in order to be pleasing to you,
+possess a first name, like the ladies of former days, a baptismal name
+such as Marguerite, Thérèse, or Jeanne?’
+
+“‘You are a living proof to the contrary.’
+
+“I sought her gaze, but it did not respond to mine. She seemed not to
+have heard. I could no longer entertain doubts: she was a coquette. I
+was delighted. I told her that I found her charming, that I loved her,
+and I told her so over and over again. She suffered me to go on with my
+speeches, and finally asked:
+
+“‘What do you mean by all this!’
+
+“I became more pressing.
+
+“‘She reproached me for taking liberties with her, exclaiming:
+
+“‘Your ways are those of a savage.’
+
+“‘I do not find acceptance with you?’
+
+“‘I do not say so.’
+
+“Chéron, Chéron, would it cost you any great effort to...’
+
+“We sat down together on a bench over which an elm cast its shade. I
+took her hand, and carried it to my lips ... of a sudden, I no longer
+felt, no longer saw anything, and I found myself lying in bed at home.
+I rubbed my eyes, smarting with the morning light, and I saw my valet
+who, standing before me with a stupid look, was saying to me:
+
+“It is nine o’clock, sir. You told me to wake you at nine o’clock, sir.
+I have come to tell you, sir, that it is nine o’clock?”
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Hippolyte Dufresne was warmly congratulated by his friends on his
+finishing the reading of his story.
+
+Nicole Langelier, applying to him the words of Critias to Triephon,
+said:
+
+“You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people
+of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a
+night.”
+
+“It is not likely,” remarked Joséphin Leclerc, “that the future
+will be such as you have seen it. I do not wish for the coming of
+socialism, but I dread it not. Collectivism at the helm would be quite
+another thing than is imagined. Who was it who said, carrying back his
+thoughts to the time of Constantine and of the Church’s early triumphs:
+‘Christianity is triumphant, but its triumph is subject to the
+conditions imposed by life on all political and religious parties. All
+of them, whatever they may be, undergo so complete a transformation
+in the struggle that after victory there remains of themselves but the
+name and a few symbols of the last idea’?”
+
+“Must we then give up the idea of knowing the future?” asked M. Goubin.
+
+But Giacomo Boni, who when delving down into a few feet of soil had
+descended from the present period to the stone age, remarked:
+
+“Upon the whole, humanity changes little. What has been shall be.”
+
+“No doubt,” replied Jean Boilly, “man, or that which we call man,
+changes little. We belong to a definite species. The evolution of the
+species is of necessity included in the definition of the species. It
+is impossible to conceive humanity subsequent to its transformation. A
+transformed species is a lost species. But what reason is there for us
+to believe that man is the end of the evolution of life upon the earth?
+Why suppose that his birth has exhausted the creative forces of nature,
+and that the universal mother of the flora and fauna should, after
+having shaped him, become for ever barren. A natural philosopher, who
+does not stand in fear of his own ideas, H. G. Wells, has said: ‘Man
+is not final.’ No indeed, man is neither the beginning nor the end of
+terrestrial life. Long before him, all over the globe, animated forces
+were multiplying in the depths of the sea, in the mud of the strand,
+in the forests, lakes, prairies, and tree-topped mountains. After him,
+new forms will go on taking shape. A future race, born perhaps of our
+own, but having perchance no bond of origin with us, will succeed us in
+the empire of the planet. These new spirits of the earth will ignore or
+despise us. The monuments of our arts, should they discover vestiges of
+them, will have no meaning for them. Rulers of the future, whose mind
+we can no more divine than the palæopithekos of the Siwalik Mountains
+was able to forecast the trains of thought of Aristotle, Newton, and
+Poincaré.”
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note:
+
+Quotation marks have been standardised. Spelling and hyphenation have
+been retained as they appear in the original publication except as
+follows:
+
+  Page 8
+  Καὶ εμοιγε δοκειτε ἐπὶ λευκαδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείροων
+  καταδαρθεντες τοσαῡτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτός
+  ὄυσης. _changed to_
+  Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων
+  καταδαρθέντες τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς
+  οὔσης.
+
+  Page 63
+  since his tenous substance _changed to_
+  since his tenuous substance
+
+  Page 65
+  would facedeath for a _changed to_
+  would face death for a
+
+  Page 72
+  are quarelling over _changed to_
+  are quarrelling over
+
+  Page 111
+  and by a similiar _changed to_
+  and by a similar
+
+  Page 120
+  personages of the diologue are _changed to_
+  personages of the dialogue are
+
+  Page 184
+  it as absurd _changed to_
+  is as absurd
+
+  Page 191
+  were on the whole androginous in _changed to_
+  were on the whole androgynous in
+
+  Page 201
+  produced and consumed? _changed to_
+  produced and consumed.
+
+  Page 231
+  schisms which occured in _changed to_
+  schisms which occurred in
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Stone, by Anatole France
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49092 ***
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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Stone, by Anatole France
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The White Stone
-
-Author: Anatole France
-
-Editor: Frederic Chapman
-
-Translator: Charles E. Roche
-
-Release Date: May 31, 2015 [EBook #49092]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE STONE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
-http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
-generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
-Libraries.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class="hidehand">
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="515" height="837" alt="Cover" />
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="title-page">
-<hr />
-<p class="noi center">THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE<br />
-IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION<br />
-EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN</p>
-
-<h1>THE WHITE STONE</h1>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<img src="images/title.jpg" width="400" height="465" alt="Title page" />
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="title-page">
-<hr />
-<p class="title"><span class="p200">THE WHITE STONE</span></p>
-<p class="title">BY ANATOLE FRANCE</p>
-
-<p class="title">A TRANSLATION BY<br />
-CHARLES E. ROCHE</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
-<img src="images/title2.jpg" width="400" height="607" alt="Title page" />
-</div>
-</div>
-
-
-<p class="title mt4">LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD<br />
-NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMX</p>
-
-<hr />
-<p class="title">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne &amp; Co, Limited</span><br />
-Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<h2><a name="contents" id="contents"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
-
-<table summary="Content">
-<tr>
-<th class="tdr">CHAP.</th>
-<th></th>
-<th class="tdr2">PAGE</th>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">I.</td>
-<td></td>
-<td class="tdr2"><a href="#i">9</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">II.</td>
-<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Gallio</span></td>
-<td class="tdr2"><a href="#ii">29</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">III.</td>
-<td></td>
-<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iii">107</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
-<td></td>
-<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iv">147</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">V.</td>
-<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Through the Horn or the
-Ivory Gate</span></td>
-<td class="tdr2"><a href="#v">183</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
-<td></td>
-<td class="tdr2"><a href="#vi">237</a></td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-<blockquote>
-<p class="noi nmb"><a name="Greek" id="Greek"></a>Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων καταδαρθέντες
-τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς οὔσης.</p>
-
-<p class="right nmt nmb">(Philopatris, xxi.)</p>
-
-<p class="noi">And to me it seems that you have fallen asleep upon a white rock, and
-in a parish of dreams, and have dreamt all this in a moment while it
-was night.</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_9" id="Page_9" title="9"> </a>
-<a name="i" id="i"></a><span class="red">THE WHITE STONE</span><br />
-I</h2>
-
-<div class="width80">
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-chap1.jpg" width="80" height="87" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">A few</span> Frenchmen, united in friendship, who were spending the spring in
-Rome, were wont to meet amid the ruins of the disinterred Forum. They
-were Joséphin Leclerc, an Embassy Attaché on leave; M. Goubin, licencié
-ès lettres, an annotator; Nicole Langelier, of the old Parisian family
-of the Langeliers, printers and classical scholars; Jean Boilly, a
-civil engineer, and Hippolyte Dufresne, a man of leisure, and a lover
-of the fine arts.</p>
-
-<p>Towards five o’clock of the afternoon of the first day of May, they
-wended their way, as was their custom, through the northern door,
-closed to the public, where Commendatore Boni, who superintended the
-excavations, welcomed them with quiet amenity, and led them to the
-threshold of his house of wood nestling in the shadow of laurel bushes,
-privet hedges and cytisus, and rising above the vast<a class="pagenum" name="Page_10" id="Page_10" title="10"> </a> trench, dug down
-to the depth of the ancient Forum, in the cattle market of pontifical
-Rome.</p>
-
-<p>Here, they pause awhile, and look about them.</p>
-
-<p>Facing them rise the truncated shafts of the Columnæ Honorariæ, and
-where stood the Basilica of Julia, the eye rested on what bore the
-semblance of a huge draughts-board and its draughts. Further south, the
-three columns of the Temple of the Dioscuri cleave the azure of the
-skies with their blue-tinted volutes. On their right, surmounting the
-dilapidated Arch of Septimus Severus, the tall columns of the Temple
-of Saturn, the dwellings of Christian Rome, and the Women’s Hospital
-display in tiers, their facings yellower and muddier than the waters of
-the Tiber. To their left stands the Palatine flanked by huge red arches
-and crowned with evergreen oaks. At their feet, from hill to hill,
-among the flagstones of the Via Sacra, narrow as a village street,
-spring from the earth an agglomeration of brick walls and marble
-foundations, the remains of buildings which dotted the Forum in the
-days of Rome’s strength. Trefoil, oats, and the grasses of the field
-which the wind has sown on their lowered tops, have covered them with
-a rustic roof illumined by the crimson poppies. A mass of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">débris</i>,
-of crumbling entablatures, a multitude of pillars and altars, an
-entanglement of steps and enclosing walls: all this indeed not stunted
-but of a serried vastness and within limits.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_11" id="Page_11" title="11"> </a>
-Nicole Langelier was doubtless reviewing in his mind the host of
-monuments confined in this famed space:</p>
-
-<p>“These edifices of wise proportions and moderate dimensions,” he
-remarked, “were separated from one another by narrow streets full of
-shade. Here ran the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">vicoli</i> beloved in countries where the sun shines,
-while the generous descendants of Remus, on their return from hearing
-public speakers, found, along the walls of the temples, cool yet
-foul-smelling corners, whence the rinds of water-melons and castaway
-shells were never swept away, and where they could eat and enjoy their
-siesta. The shops skirting the square must certainly have emitted the
-pungent odour of onions, wine, fried meats, and cheese. The butchers’
-stalls were laden with meats, to the delectation of the hardy citizens,
-and it was from one of those butchers that Virginius snatched the knife
-with which he killed his daughter. There also were doubtless jewellers
-and vendors of little domestic tutelary deities, protectors of the
-hearth, the ox-stall, and the garden. The citizens’ necessaries of life
-were all centred in this spot. The market and the shops, the basilicas,
-<abbr title="that is">i.e.</abbr>, the commercial Exchanges and the civil tribunals; the Curia,
-that municipal council which became the administrative power of the
-universe; the prisons, whose vaults emitted their much dreaded and
-fetid<a class="pagenum" name="Page_12" id="Page_12" title="12"> </a> effluvia, and the temples, the altars, of the highest necessity
-to the Italians who have ever some thing to beg of the celestial powers.</p>
-
-<p>“Here it was, lastly, that during a long roll of centuries were
-accomplished the vulgar or strange deeds, almost ever flat and dull,
-oftentimes odious and ridiculous, at times generous, the agglomeration
-of which constitutes the august life of a people.”</p>
-
-<p>“What is it that one sees, in the centre of the square, fronting the
-commemorative pedestals?” inquired M. Goubin, who, primed with an
-eye-glass, had noticed a new feature in the ancient Forum, and was
-thirsting for information concerning it.</p>
-
-<p>Joséphin Leclerc obligingly answered him that they were the foundations
-of the recently unearthed colossal statue of Domitian.</p>
-
-<p>Thereupon he pointed out, one after the other, the monuments laid bare
-by Giacomo Boni in the course of his five years’ fruitful excavations:
-the fountain and the well of Juturna, under the Palatine Hill; the
-altar erected on the site of Cæsar’s funeral pile, the base of which
-spread itself at their feet, opposite the Rostra; the archaic stele and
-the legendary tomb of Romulus over which lies the black marble slab of
-the Comitium; and again, the Lacus Curtius.</p>
-
-<p>The sun, which had set behind the Capitol, was<a class="pagenum" name="Page_13" id="Page_13" title="13"> </a> striking with its
-last shafts the triumphal arch of Titus on the towering Velia. The
-heavens, where to the West the pearl-white moon floated, remained as
-blue as at midday. An even, peaceful, and clear shadow spread itself
-over the silent Forum. The bronzed navvies were delving this field of
-stones, while, pursuing the work of the ancient Kings, their comrades
-turned the crank of a well, for the purpose of drawing the water which
-still forms the bed where slumbered, in the days of pious Numa, the
-reed-fringed Velabrum.</p>
-
-<p>They were performing their task methodically and with vigilance.
-Hippolyte Dufresne, who had for several months been a witness of their
-assiduous labour, of their intelligence and of their prompt obedience
-to orders, inquired of the director of the excavations how it was that
-he obtained such yeoman’s work from his labourers.</p>
-
-<p>“By leading their life,” replied Giacomo Boni. “Together with them do I
-turn over the soil; I impart to them what we are together seeking for,
-and I impress on their minds the beauty of our common work. They feel
-an interest in an enterprise the grandeur of which they apprehend but
-vaguely. I have seen their faces pale with enthusiasm when unearthing
-the tomb of Romulus. I am their everyday comrade, and if one of them
-falls ill, I take a seat at his bedside. I place as great faith in them
-as<a class="pagenum" name="Page_14" id="Page_14" title="14"> </a> they do in me. And so it is that I boast of faithful workmen.”</p>
-
-<p>“Boni, my dear Boni,” exclaimed Joséphin Leclerc, “you know full well
-that I admire your labours, and that your grand discoveries fill me
-with emotion, and yet, allow me to say so, I regret the days when
-flocks grazed over the entombed Forum. A white ox, from whose massive
-head branched horns widely apart, chewed the cud in the unploughed
-field; a hind dozed at the foot of a tall column which sprang from the
-sward, and one mused: Here was debated the fate of the world. The Forum
-has been lost to poets and lovers from the day that it ceased to be the
-Campo Formio.”</p>
-
-<p>Jean Boilly dwelt on the value of these excavations, so methodically
-carried out, as a contribution towards a knowledge of the past. Then,
-the conversation having drifted towards the philosophy of the history
-of Rome:</p>
-
-<p>“The Latins,” he remarked, “displayed reason even in the matter of
-their religion. Their gods were commonplace and vulgar, but full of
-common sense and occasionally generous. If a comparison be drawn
-between this Roman Pantheon composed of soldiers, magistrates, virgins,
-and matrons and the deviltries painted on the walls of Etruscan tombs,
-reason and madness will be found in juxtaposition. The infernal scenes
-depicted in the mortuary chambers<a class="pagenum" name="Page_15" id="Page_15" title="15"> </a> of Corneto represent the monstrous
-creations of ignorance and fear. They seem to us as grotesque as
-Orcagna’s <em>Day of Judgment</em> in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and the
-<em>Dantesque Hell</em> of the Campo Santo of Pisa, whereas the Latin Pantheon
-reflects for ever the image of a well-organised society. The gods of
-the Romans were like themselves, industrious and good citizens. They
-were useful deities, each one having its proper function. The very
-nymphs held civil and political offices.</p>
-
-<p>“Look at Juturna, whose altar at the foot of the Palatine we have so
-frequently contemplated. She did not seem fated by her birth, her
-adventures, and her misfortunes to occupy a permanent post in the
-city of Romulus. An incensed Rutula, beloved by Jupiter, who rewarded
-her with immortality, when King Turnus fell by the hand of Æneas, as
-decreed by the Fates, she flung herself into the Tiber, to escape thus
-from the light of day, since it was denied her to perish with her royal
-brother. Long did the shepherds of Latium tell the story of the living
-nymph’s lamentations from the depths of the river. In later years, the
-villagers of rural Rome, when looking down at night-time over the bank,
-imagined that they could see her by the moon’s rays, lurking in her
-glaucous garments among the rushes. The Romans, however, did not leave
-her to the idle contemplation of her sorrows. They promptly conceived<a class="pagenum" name="Page_16" id="Page_16" title="16"> </a>
-the idea of allotting to her an important duty, and entrusted her
-with the custody of their fountains, converting her into a municipal
-goddess. And so it is with all their divinities. The Dioscuri, whose
-temple lives in its beautiful ruins, the Dioscuri, the brothers of
-Helen, the sparkling <em>Gemini</em>, were put to good use by the Romans, as
-messengers of the State. The Dioscuri it was, who, mounted on a white
-charger, brought to Rome the news of the victory of Lake Regillus.</p>
-
-<p>“The Italians asked of their gods only temporal and substantial
-benefits. In this respect, notwithstanding the Asiatic fears which have
-invaded Europe, their religious sentiment has not changed. That which
-they formally demanded from their gods and their genii, they nowadays
-expect from the Madonna and the Saints. Every parish possesses its
-Beatified patron, to whom requests are preferred just as in the case of
-a Deputy. There are Saints for the vine, for cereals, for cattle, for
-the colic, and for toothache. Latin imagination has repeopled Heaven
-with a multitude of living bodies, and has converted Judaic monotheism
-into a new polytheism. It has enlivened the Gospels with a copious
-mythology; it has re-established a familiar intercourse between the
-divine and the terrestrial worlds. The peasantry demand miracles of
-their protecting Saints, and hurl invectives at them if the miracle is
-slow of manifestation.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_17" id="Page_17" title="17"> </a> The peasant who has in vain solicited a favour
-of the Bambino, returns to the chapel, and addressing on this occasion
-the Incoronata herself, exclaims:</p>
-
-<p>“‘I am not speaking to you, you whoreson, but to your sainted mother.’</p>
-
-<p>“The women make the Madre di Dio a confidant of their love affairs.
-They believe with some show of reason that being a woman she
-understands, and that there is no need to be on a footing of delicacy
-with her. They have no fear of going too far&mdash;a proof of their piety.
-Hence we must view with admiration the prayer which a fine lass of
-the Genoese Riviera addressed to the Madonna: ‘Holy Mother of God,
-who didst conceive without sin, grant me the grace of sinning without
-conceiving.’”</p>
-
-<p>Nicole Langelier here remarked that the religion of the Romans lent
-itself to the evolution of Rome’s policy.</p>
-
-<p>“Bearing the stamp of a distinctly national character,” he said, “it
-was, for all that, capable of penetrating the minds of foreign nations,
-and of winning them over by its sociable and tolerant spirit. It was an
-administrative religion propagating itself without effort together with
-the rest of the administration.”</p>
-
-<p>“The Romans loved war,” said M. Goubin, who studiously avoided
-paradoxes.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_18" id="Page_18" title="18"> </a>
-“They loved not war for itself,” was Jean Boilly’s rejoinder. “They
-were far too reasonable for that. That military service was to them a
-hardship is revealed by certain signs. Monsieur Michel Bréal tells you
-that the word which primarily expressed the equipment of the soldier,
-<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ærumna</i>, subsequently assumed the general meaning of lassitude, need,
-trouble, hardship, toil, pain, and distress. Those peasants were just
-as other peasants. They entered the ranks merely because compelled and
-forced thereto. Their very leaders, the wealthy proprietors, waged war
-neither for pleasure nor for glory. Previous to entering on a campaign,
-they consulted their interests twenty times over, and carefully
-computed the chances.”</p>
-
-<p>“True,” said M. Goubin, “but their circumstances and the state of the
-world compelled them ever to be in arms. Thus it is that they carried
-civilisation to the far ends of the known world. War is above all an
-instrument of progress.”</p>
-
-<p>“The Latins,” resumed Jean Boilly, “were agriculturists who waged
-agriculturists’ wars. Their ambitions were ever agricultural. They
-exacted of the vanquished, not money, but soil, the whole or part of
-the territory of the subjugated confederation, generally speaking
-one-third, out of friendship, as they said, and because they were
-moderate in their desires. The farmer came and drove his plough<a class="pagenum" name="Page_19" id="Page_19" title="19"> </a> over
-the spot where the legionary had a short while ago planted his pike.
-The tiller of the soil confirmed the soldier’s conquests. Admirable
-soldiers, doubtless, well disciplined, patient, and brave, who fought
-and who were sometimes beaten just like any others; yet still more
-admirable peasants. If wonder is felt at their having conquered so many
-lands, still more is it to be wondered at that they should have kept
-them. The marvel of it is that in spite of the many battles they lost,
-these stubborn peasants never yielded an acre of soil, so to speak.”</p>
-
-<p>While this discussion was proceeding, Giacomo Boni was gazing with a
-hostile eye at the tall brick house standing to the north of the Forum
-on top of several layers of ancient substructures.</p>
-
-<p>“We are about,” he said, “to explore the Curia Julia. We shall soon, I
-hope, be in a position to break up the sordid building which covers its
-remains. It will not cost the State much to purchase it for the spade’s
-work. Buried under nine mètres of soil on which stands the Convent of
-S. Adriano lie the flagstones of Diocletian, who restored the Curia
-for the last time. We shall surely find among the rubbish a number
-of the marble tables on which the laws were engraved. It is a matter
-of interest to Rome, to Italy, nay to the whole world, that the last
-vestiges of the Roman Senate should see the light of day.”</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_20" id="Page_20" title="20"> </a>
-Thereupon he invited his friends into his hut, as hospitable and rustic
-a one as that of Evander.</p>
-
-<p>It constituted a single room wherein stood a deal table laden with
-black potteries and shapeless fragments giving out an earthy smell.</p>
-
-<p>“Prehistorical treasures!” sighed Joséphin Leclerc. “And so, my good
-Giacomo Boni, not content with seeking in the Forum the monuments of
-the Emperors, those of the Republic, and those of the Kings, you must
-fain sink down into the soil which bore flora and fauna that have
-vanished, drive your spade into the quaternary, and the tertiary,
-penetrate the pliocene, the miocene, and the eocene; from Latin
-archæology you wander to prehistoric archæology and to palæontology.
-The salons are expressing alarm at the depths to which you are
-venturing. Countess Pasolini would like to know where you intend to
-stop, and you are represented in a little satirical sheet as coming out
-at the Antipodes, breathing the words: <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">Adesso va bene!</i>”</p>
-
-<p>Boni seemed not to have heard.</p>
-
-<p>He was examining with deep attention a clay vessel still damp and
-covered with ooze. His pale blue expressive eyes darkened while
-critically examining this humble work of man for some unrevealed
-trace of a mysterious past, but resumed their natural hue as the
-Commendatore’s mind wandered off into a reverie.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_21" id="Page_21" title="21"> </a>
-“These remains which you have before you,” he presently remarked,
-“these roughly hewn little wooden sarcophagi and these cinerary urns of
-black pottery and of house-like shape containing calcined bones were
-gathered under the Temple of Faustina, on the north-west side of the
-Forum.</p>
-
-<p>“Black urns containing ashes, and skeletons resting in their coffins
-as if in a bed, are here to be met with side by side. The funeral
-rites of the Greeks and the Romans included both those of burial and
-of cremation. Over the whole of Europe, in prehistoric days, the two
-customs were simultaneously observed, in the same city and in the same
-tribe. Does this dual fashion of sepulture correspond with the ideals
-of two races? I am inclined to believe so.”</p>
-
-<p>Picking up, with reverential and almost ritual gesture, an urn shaped
-like a dwelling and containing a small quantity of ashes, he went on:</p>
-
-<p>“The men who in immemorial times gave this form to clay, believed that
-the soul, being attached to the bones and the ashes, had need of a
-dwelling, but that it did not require a very large house wherein to
-live the abridged life of the dead. These men were of a noble race
-which came from Asia. The one whose light ashes I now hold lived before
-the days of Evander and of the shepherd Faustulus.”</p>
-
-<p>Then, making use of the phraseology of the ancients, he added:</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_22" id="Page_22" title="22"> </a>
-“Those were the days when King Vitulus, King Calf as we should say,
-held peaceful sway over this country so pregnant with glory. Monotonous
-pastoral times reigned over the Ausonian plain. These men were,
-however, neither ignorant nor boorish. Much priceless knowledge had
-come to them from their forefathers. Both the ship and the oar were
-known to them. They practised the art of subjecting oxen to the yoke
-and of harnessing them to the pole. They kindled at will the divine
-flame. They gathered salt, wrought in gold, kneaded and baked vases
-of clay. Probably too they began to till the soil. They do say that
-the Latin shepherds became agricultural labourers in the fabled days
-of the Calf. They cultivated millet, wheat, and spelt. They stitched
-skins together with needles of bone. They wove and perchance made wool
-false to its whiteness by dyeing it various colours. By the phases of
-the moon did they measure time. They gazed upon the heavens but to
-discover in them what was in the world below. They saw in them the
-greyhound who watches for Diospiter the shepherd who tends the starry
-flock. The prolific clouds were to them the Sun’s cattle, the cows
-supplying milk to the cerulean countryside. They worshipped the heavens
-as their Father, and the Earth as their Mother. At eventide, they heard
-the chariots of the gods, like themselves migratory,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_23" id="Page_23" title="23"> </a> roll along the
-mountain roads with their ponderous wheels. They enjoyed the light of
-day and pondered with sadness over the life of the souls in the Kingdom
-of Shadows.</p>
-
-<p>“We know that these massive-headed Aryans were fair, since their gods,
-made to their own image, were fair. Indra had locks like ears of wheat
-and a beard as tawny as the tiger’s coat. The Greeks conceived the
-immortal gods with blue or glaucous eyes, and a head of golden hair.
-The goddess Roma was <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">flava et candida</i>:</p>
-
-<p>“Were it possible to make a whole out of these calcined bony fragments,
-the result would be pure Aryan forms. In those massive and vigorous
-skulls, in those heads as square as the primary Rome which their sons
-were to build, you would recognise the ancestors of the patricians of
-the Commonwealth, the long flourishing stock which produced tribunes
-of the people, pontiffs, and consuls; you would be handling the
-magnificent mould of the robust brains which constructed religion, the
-family, the army, and the public laws of the most strongly organised
-city that ever existed.”</p>
-
-<p>Gently placing the bit of pottery on the rustic table, Giacomo Boni
-bends over a coffin the size of a cradle, a coffin dug out of the trunk
-of an oak, and similar in shape to the early canoes of man. He lifts up
-the thin covering of bark and sap-wood<a class="pagenum" name="Page_24" id="Page_24" title="24"> </a> forming the lid of that funeral
-wherry, and brings to light bones as frail as a bird’s skeleton. Of
-the body, there hardly remains the spinal column, and it would bear
-resemblance to one of the lowest of vertebrata, such as a big saurian,
-did not the fullness of the forehead reveal man. Coloured beads, which
-have become detached from a necklace, are scattered over these bones
-browned with age, washed by subterraneous waters, and exhumed from
-clayey soil.</p>
-
-<p>“Look!” says Boni, “at this little boy who was not given the honours of
-cremation, but buried, and returned as a whole to the earth whence he
-sprung. He is not a son of headmen, nor a noble inheritor of the traits
-of a fair race. He belongs to the race indigenous to the Mediterranean,
-the race which became the Roman <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">plebs</i>, and which supplies Italy to
-the present day with subtile lawyers and calculating individuals. He
-was born in the Palatine City of the Seven Hills, in days seen dimly
-through the mist of heroic fables. It is a Romulean boy. In those
-days, the Valley of the Seven Hills was a morass, and the slopes of
-the Palatine were covered with reed-thatched huts only. A tiny lance
-was placed on the coffin to show that the child was a male. He was
-barely four years old when he fell asleep in death. Then his mother
-clothed him with a beautiful tunic clasped at the neck, around which
-she fastened a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_25" id="Page_25" title="25"> </a> string of beads. The kinsmen did not begrudge him their
-offerings. They deposited on his tomb, in urns of black earthenware,
-milk, beans, and a bunch of grapes. I have collected these vessels and
-I have fashioned similar ones out of the same clay by the heat of a
-wood fire lit in the Forum at night. Previous to taking a last farewell
-of him, they ate and drank together a portion of their offerings; this
-funeral repast assuaged their sorrow. Child, thou who sleepest since
-the days of the god Quirinus, an Empire has passed over thy agrestic
-coffin, and the same stars which shone at thy birth are about to light
-up the skies above us. The unfathomable space which separates the hours
-of your life from those of our own constitutes but an imperceptible
-moment in the life of the Universe.”</p>
-
-<p>After a moment’s silence, Nicole Langelier remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“It is as difficult to distinguish amid a people the races composing it
-as to trace in the course of a river the streams which mingle with it.
-What constitutes, moreover, a race? Do any human races really exist?
-I see white men, red men, and black men. But, they do not constitute
-races; they are merely varieties of the same race, of the same species,
-which form together fruitful unions and intermingle without ceasing.
-<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">A fortiori</i>, the man of learning knows not several yellow races or
-several white races.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_26" id="Page_26" title="26"> </a> Human beings invent, however, races in pursuance
-of their vanity, their hatred, or their greed. In 1871, France became
-dismembered by virtue of the rights of the Germanic race, and yet no
-German race has an existence. The antiemites kindle the hatred of
-Christian peoples against the Jews, and still there is no Jewish race.</p>
-
-<p>“What I state on the subject, Boni, is purely speculative, and not with
-the view of running counter to your ideas. How could one not believe
-you! Conviction has its home on your lips. Moreover, you blend in your
-thoughts the profound verities of poetry with the far-spreading truths
-of science. As you truly state, the shepherds who came from Bactriana
-peopled Greece and Italy. As you again say, they found there natives
-of the soil. In ancient days, a belief shared in common by Italians
-and Hellenes was that the first men who peopled their country were
-like Erectheus, born of Mother Earth. Nor do I pretend, my dear Boni,
-that you cannot trace through the centuries the antochthones of your
-Ausonia, and the immigrants from the Pamir; the former, intelligent
-and eloquent plebeians; the latter, patricians fully impregnated with
-courage and faith. For, when all is said, if there are not, properly
-speaking, several human races, and if still less so several white
-races, our species assuredly comprises distinct varieties oftentimes
-stamped with marked characteristics. Hence there is nothing to hinder<a class="pagenum" name="Page_27" id="Page_27" title="27"> </a>
-two or more of these varieties living for a long time side by side
-without fusing, each one preserving its individual characteristics.
-Nay, these differences may occasionally, in lieu of vanishing with the
-course of time under the action of the plastic forces of nature, on
-the contrary become accentuated more strongly through the empire of
-immutable customs, and the stress of social institutions.”</p>
-
-<p>“<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">E proprio vero</i>,” said Boni in a low tone, as he replaced the oaken
-lid on the coffin of the Romulean child.</p>
-
-<p>Then, begging his guests to be seated, he said to Nicole Langelier:</p>
-
-<p>“I shall now hold you to your promise, and beg you to read to us that
-story of Gallio, at which I have seen you at work in your little room
-in the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">Foro Traiano</i>. You make Romans speak in your script. This is
-the spot to hear your narrative, here in a corner of the Forum, close
-by the Via Sacra, between the Capitol and the Palatine. Tarry not with
-your reading, so as not to be overtaken by the twilight, and lest your
-voice be quickly drowned by the cries of the birds warning one another
-of approaching night.”</p>
-
-<p>The guests of Giacomo Boni welcomed the foregoing utterance with a
-murmur of approval, and Nicole Langelier, without waiting for more
-pressing entreaties, unrolled a manuscript and read aloud the following
-narrative.</p>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_28" id="Page_28" title="28"> </a></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_29" id="Page_29" title="29"> </a>
-<a name="ii" id="ii"></a>II<br />
-
-GALLIO</h2>
-
-
-<div class="width80">
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-i_drop.jpg" width="80" height="87" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap2"><span class="uppercase">In</span> the 804th year of the foundation of Rome, and the 13th of the
-principality of Claudius Cæsar, Junius Annæus Novatus was proconsul of
-Achaia. Born of a knightly family of Spanish origin, a son of Seneca
-the Rhetor and of the chaste Helvia, a brother of Annæus Mela, and of
-the famed Lucius Annæus, he bore the name of his adoptive father, the
-Rhetor Gallio, exiled by Tiberius. In his mother’s veins flowed the
-same blood as that of Cicero, and he had inherited from his father,
-together with immense wealth, a love of letters and of philosophy. He
-studied the works of the Greeks even more assiduously than those of the
-Latins. His mind was a prey to noble aspiration. He was an interested
-student of nature and of what appertains to her. The activity of his
-intelligence was so keen that he enjoyed being read to while in his
-bath, and that, even when joining in the chase, he was wont to<a class="pagenum" name="Page_30" id="Page_30" title="30"> </a> carry
-with him his tablets of wax and his stylus. During the leisure moments
-which he managed to secure in the intervals of most serious duties and
-most important works, he wrote books on subjects relating to nature,
-and composed tragedies.</p>
-
-<p>His clients and his freedmen loudly proclaimed his gentleness. His was
-indeed a genial character. He had never been known to give way to a fit
-of anger. He looked upon violence as the worst and most unpardonable of
-weaknesses.</p>
-
-<p>All deeds of cruelty were held in execration by him, save when their
-true character escaped him owing to the consecration of custom and of
-public opinion. He frequently discovered, amid the severities rendered
-sacred by ancestral usage and sanctified by the laws, revolting
-excesses against which he raised his voice in protest, and which he
-would have attempted to sweep away, had not the interests of the State
-and the common welfare been objected from all quarters. In those days,
-conscientious magistrates and honest functionaries were not few and far
-between throughout the Empire. There were indeed a number as honest and
-as impartial as Gallio himself, but it is to be doubted whether another
-could be found so humane.</p>
-
-<p>Entrusted with the administration of that Greece despoiled of her
-riches, her pristine glory departed, and fallen from her freedom so
-full of life into<a class="pagenum" name="Page_31" id="Page_31" title="31"> </a> an idle tranquillity, he remembered that she had
-formerly taught the world wisdom and the fine arts, and his treatment
-of her combined the vigilance of a guardian with the reverence of
-a son. He respected the liberties of the cities and the rights of
-individuals. He showed honour to those who were truly Greeks by birth
-and education, regretting that their numbers were sorely restricted,
-and that his authority extended for the greater part over an infamous
-rabble of Jews and Syrians; yet he remained equitable in dealing with
-these Asiatics, laying unction to his soul for what he considered a
-meritorious endeavour.</p>
-
-<p>He dwelt in Corinth, the richest and most densely populated city of
-Roman Greece. His villa, built in the time of Augustus, enlarged
-and embellished since then by the pro-consuls who had governed the
-province in succession, stood on the furthermost western slopes of the
-Acrocorinthus, whose foliaged summit was crowned by the Temple of Venus
-and the groves where dwelt her priests. It was a somewhat spacious
-mansion surrounded by gardens studded with bushy trees, watered by
-springs, ornamented with statues, alcoves, gymnasia, baths, libraries,
-and altars consecrated to the gods.</p>
-
-<p>He was strolling in it on a certain morn, according to his wont,
-with his brother Annæus Mela, discoursing on the order of nature and
-the vicissitudes<a class="pagenum" name="Page_32" id="Page_32" title="32"> </a> of fortune. The sun was rising, hazy in its white
-splendour in the roseate heavens. The gentle undulations of the hills
-of the Isthmus concealed the Saronic shore, the Stadium, the sanctuary
-of the sports, and the eastern harbour of Cenchreæ. Between the fallow
-slopes of the Geranean range and the crimson twin-peaked Helicon, one
-could, however, obtain a glimpse of the quiescent blue waters of the
-Alcyonium Mare. In the distance, and to the north, glistened the three
-snow-capped summits of Parnassus. Gallio and Mela proceeded together
-as far as the edge of the elevated foreground. At their feet spread
-Corinth standing on an extensive plateau of pale yellow sand, and
-sloping gently towards the spumous fringe of the Gulf. The pavements of
-the forum, the columns of the basilica, the tiers of the hippodrome,
-the white steps of the porches sparkled, while the gilded roofs of the
-temples flashed dazzling rays. Vast and new, the town was intersected
-with straight-running streets. A wide road descended to the harbour of
-Lechæum, whose shore was fringed with warehouses and whose waters were
-covered with ships. To the west, the atmosphere reeked with the smoke
-of the iron-foundries, while the streams ran black from the pollution
-of the dye-houses, and on that side, forests of pine extending to the
-edge of the horizon, were lost to sight in the skies.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_33" id="Page_33" title="33"> </a>
-Gradually, the town awoke from its slumbers. The strident neighing of a
-horse rent the morning calm, and soon were heard the muffled rumblings
-of wheels, shouting of waggoners, and the chanting voices of women
-selling herbs. Emerging from their hovels amid the ruins of the Palace
-of Sisyphus, aged and blind hags bearing copper vessels on their heads,
-and led by children, wended their way to draw water from the Pirene
-fountain. On the flat roofs of the houses abutting the grounds of the
-proconsul, Corinthian women were spreading linen to dry, and one of
-them was castigating her child with leek-stalks. In the hollow road
-leading to the Acropolis, a semi-nude old bronze-coloured man, prodded
-the rump of an ass laden with salad herbs and chanted between the
-stumps of his teeth and in his unkempt beard, a slave-song:</p>
-
-<div class="container">
-<div class="poem">
-<div class="verse">
-<div class="line indent2">“Toil, little ass,</div>
-<div class="line indent3">As I have toiled.</div>
-<div class="line">Much good will it do you:</div>
-<div class="line">You may be sure of it.”</div>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Meanwhile, at the sight of the town resuming its daily labour, Gallio
-fell a-musing over the earlier Corinth, the lovely Ionian city, opulent
-and joyous until the day when she witnessed the massacre of her
-citizens by the soldiery of Mummius, her women, the noble daughters of
-Sisyphus, sold at auction, her<a class="pagenum" name="Page_34" id="Page_34" title="34"> </a> palaces and temples the prey of flames,
-her walls razed to the ground, and her riches piled away into the
-Liburnian ships of the Consul.</p>
-
-<p>“Hardly a century ago,” he remarked, “the work wrought by Mummius still
-stood revealed in all its horror. The shore which you see, brother
-mine, was more of a desert than the Libyan sands. The divine Julius
-rebuilt the town wrecked by our arms, and peopled it with freedmen. On
-this very strand, where the illustrious Bacchiadæ formerly revelled
-in their haughty indolence, poor and rude Latins settled, and Corinth
-entered upon a new lease of life. She grew rapidly, and realised how to
-take advantage of her position. She levies tribute on all ships which,
-whether from the East or from the West, cast anchor in her two harbours
-of Lechæum and Cenchreæ. Her population and wealth increase apace under
-the ægis of the Roman peace.</p>
-
-<p>“What blessings has not the Empire bestowed throughout the world! To
-the Empire is due the profound tranquillity which the countryside
-enjoys. The seas are swept of pirates, and the highways of robbers.
-From the befogged Ocean to the Permulic Gulf, from Gades to the
-Euphrates, the trading of merchandise proceeds in undisturbed security.
-The law protects the lives and property of all. Individual rights must
-not be infringed upon. Liberty has henceforth no other limits than its
-lines of defence,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_35" id="Page_35" title="35"> </a> and is circumscribed for its own security alone.
-Justice and reason rule the world.”</p>
-
-<p>Unlike his two brothers, Annæus Mela had not intrigued for honours.
-Those who loved him, and their name was legion, for he was ever in his
-intercourse affable and extremely pleasant, attributed his detachment
-from public affairs to the moderation of a mind attracted by the
-blessings of tranquil obscurity, a mind which had no other care than
-the study of philosophy. But those who observed him with greater
-insight were under the impression that he was ambitious after his own
-fashion, and that like Mæcenas, he, a simple knight, was consumed with
-the envy of enjoying the same consideration as the consuls. Lastly,
-certain evil-minded individuals believed that they discerned in him the
-greed of the Senecas for the riches which they affected to despise, and
-thus did they explain to themselves that Mela had for a long time lived
-in obscurity in Betica, giving himself up entirely to the management of
-his vast estates, and that subsequently summoned to Rome by his brother
-the philosopher, he had devoted himself to the administration of the
-finances of the Empire, rather than go in the quest of high judiciary
-or military posts. His character could not be readily determined from
-his utterances, for he spoke the language of the Stoics, a language
-equally adapted for the concealment of the weaknesses of the mind and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_36" id="Page_36" title="36"> </a>
-the revelation of the grandeur of one’s sentiments. It was in those
-days the height of elegance to utter virtuous discourse. At any rate,
-there is no doubt that Mela spoke his thoughts.</p>
-
-<p>He replied to his brother that, although not versed in public affairs
-like himself, he had had occasion to admire the power and wisdom of the
-Romans.</p>
-
-<p>“They reveal themselves,” he said, “in the most remote parts of our own
-Spain. But it is in a wild pass of the mountains of Thessaly that I
-have been made to appreciate at its highest the beneficent majesty of
-the Empire. I had come from Hypata, a town renowned for its cheeses,
-and whose women were notorious for witchcraft, and I had been riding
-for some hours along mountain paths, without coming across a human
-face. Overcome by the heat and fatigue, I tethered my horse to a tree
-by the road, and lay down under an arbutus-bush. I had been resting
-there a short while only, when there came along a lean old man bowed
-down under a load of branches. Utterly exhausted, he tottered in his
-steps, and just as he was about to fall, exclaimed: ‘Cæsar.’ On hearing
-such an invocation escape the lips of a poor woodcutter in this stony
-solitude, my heart overflowed with veneration for the tutelary City,
-which inspires, even unto the farthermost lands, the most rustic of
-minds with so great a conception<a class="pagenum" name="Page_37" id="Page_37" title="37"> </a> of its sovereign providence. But
-sadness and a feeling of distress mingled with my admiration, brother
-mine, when I reflected upon the injury and insults to which the
-inheritance of Augustus and the fortune of Rome were exposed through
-men’s folly and the vices of the century.”</p>
-
-<p>“I have witnessed on the spot, brother mine,” replied Gallio, “the
-crimes and follies which sadden your mind. My cheek has blanched under
-the gaze of the victims of Caius from my seat in the Senate. I have
-held my peace, as I did not despair of better days. I am of the opinion
-that good citizens should serve the Republic under bad princes rather
-than shirk their duty in a useless death.”</p>
-
-<p>As Gallio was uttering these sentiments, two men, still in their youth
-and wearing the toga, came up to him. The one was Lucius Cassius, of a
-Roman family, plebeian but ancient, and having attained distinction.
-The other, Marcus Lollius, son and grandson of consuls, and moreover of
-a knightly family, which had sprung from the free town of Terracina.
-Both had frequented the schools of Athens, and acquired a knowledge of
-the laws of nature of which those Romans who had not been in Greece
-were totally ignorant.</p>
-
-<p>At the present moment, they were studying in Corinth the management
-of public affairs, and the proconsul surrounded himself with them as
-an<a class="pagenum" name="Page_38" id="Page_38" title="38"> </a> ornamental adjunct to his magistracy. Somewhat behind them, the
-Greek Apollodorus, wearing the short cape of the philosophers, bald of
-head, and with Socratic beard, sauntered along, with uplifted arm and
-gesticulating fingers, discussing with himself.</p>
-
-<p>Gallio welcomed all three of them in kindly fashion.</p>
-
-<p>“The rose of dawn is already fading,” he said, “and the sun is
-beginning to shed its steeled darts. Come along, my good friends, to
-the coolness of the shady foliage beyond.”</p>
-
-<p>Saying this, he led them along the banks of a stream whose babbling
-murmur invited peaceful reflections, until they had reached an
-enclosure of verdant bushes in the midst of which lay in a hollow an
-alabaster basin filled with limpid waters on whose surface floated
-the feather of a dove, which had just bathed in them, and which was
-now cooing plaintively from a branch. They took their seats on a
-semicircular marble bench supported by griffins. Laurel and myrtle
-bushes blended their shadows about it. Statues encircled the enclosure.
-A wounded Amazon gracefully coiled her arm about her head. Grief
-appeared a thing of beauty on her lovely face. A shaggy Satyr was
-playing with a goat. A Venus, emerging from the bath, was drying her
-wetted limbs along which a shudder of pleasurable emotion seemed to
-run. Near by, a youthful<a class="pagenum" name="Page_39" id="Page_39" title="39"> </a> Faun was smilingly placing a flute to his
-lips. His face was partly concealed by the branches, but his shining
-belly glistened amid the leafage.</p>
-
-<p>“That Faun seems animated,” remarked Marcus Lollius. “One could imagine
-that a gentle breathing was causing his bosom to heave.”</p>
-
-<p>“He is true to life, Marcus,” said Gallio. “One expects to hear rustic
-melodies flow from his flute. A Greek slave carved him out of the
-marble, in imitation of an ancient model. The Greeks formerly excelled
-in the making of these fanciful statues. Several of their efforts in
-this style are justly renowned. There is no gainsaying it: they have
-found the means of giving august traits to the gods and of expressing
-in both marble and bronze the majesty of the masters of the world. Who
-but admires the Olympian Zeus? And yet, who would care to be Phidias!”</p>
-
-<p>“No Roman would assuredly care to be Phidias,” exclaimed Lollius,
-who was spending the fortune he had inherited from his ancestry in
-ornamenting his villa at Pausilypum with the masterpieces of Phidias
-and Myron brought over from Greece and Asia.</p>
-
-<p>Lucius Cassius was of the same opinion. He argued with some warmth that
-the hands of a free man were not made to wield the sculptor’s chisel
-or the painter’s brush, and that no Roman citizen would condescend to
-the degrading work of casting<a class="pagenum" name="Page_40" id="Page_40" title="40"> </a> bronze, hewing marble into shape, and
-painting forms on a wall.</p>
-
-<p>He professed admiration for the manners of the ancient times, and
-vaunted at every opportunity the ancestral virtues.</p>
-
-<p>“Men of the stamp of Curius and Fabricius cultivated their
-lettuce-beds, and slept under thatched roofs,” he said. “They wot of no
-other statue than the Priapus carved in the heart of a box-tree, who,
-protruding his vigorous pale in the centre of their garden, threatened
-pilferers with a terrible and shameful punishment.”</p>
-
-<p>Mela, who was well versed in the annals of Rome, opposed to this
-opinion the example of an old patrician.</p>
-
-<p>“In the days of the Republic,” he pointed out, “that illustrious man,
-Caius Fabius, of a family issued from Hercules and Evander, limned with
-his own hand on the walls of the Temple of Salus paintings so highly
-prized that their recent loss, on the destruction of the temple by
-fire, has been considered a public misfortune. It is moreover related
-that he did not doff his toga when painting, thus to indicate that such
-work was not unworthy of a Roman citizen. He was given the surname of
-Pictor, which his descendants were proud to bear.”</p>
-
-<p>Lucius Cassius replied with vivacity:</p>
-
-<p>“When painting victories in a temple, Caius<a class="pagenum" name="Page_41" id="Page_41" title="41"> </a> Fabius had in mind those
-victories, and not the painting of them. No painters existed in Rome
-in those days. Anxious that the doughty deeds of his ancestors should
-for ever be present to the gaze of the Romans, he set an example to the
-artisans. But just as a pontiff or an ædile lays the first stone of
-an edifice, without exercising for that the trade of a mason or of an
-architect, Caius Fabius executed the first painting Rome boasted of,
-without it being permissible to number him with the workmen who earn
-their livelihood by painting on walls.”</p>
-
-<p>Apollodorus signified approval of this speech with a nod, and, stroking
-his philosophic beard, remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“The sons of Ascanius are born to rule the world. Any other care would
-be unworthy of them.”</p>
-
-<p>Then, speaking at some length and in well-rounded sentences, he sang
-the praises of the Romans. He flattered them because he feared them.
-But in his innermost being, he felt nothing but contempt for their
-shallow intelligences so devoid of finesse. He beslavered Gallio with
-praise in these words:</p>
-
-<p>“Thou hast ornamented this city with magnificent monuments. Thou hast
-assured the liberty of its Senate and of its people. Thou hast decreed
-excellent regulations for trade and navigation, and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_42" id="Page_42" title="42"> </a> thou dispensest
-justice with even tempered equity. Thy statue shall stand in the Forum.
-The title shall be granted to you of the second founder of Corinth, or
-rather Corinth shall take from you the name of Annæa. All these things
-are worthy of a Roman, and worthy of Gallio. But, do not think that the
-Greeks have an exaggerated affection for the manual arts. If many of
-them are engaged in painting vases, in dyeing stuffs, and in modelling
-figures, it is through necessity. Ulysses constructed his bed and his
-ship with his own hands. At the same time, the Greeks proclaim that it
-is unworthy of a wise man to give himself up to futile and gross arts.
-In his youth, Socrates followed the trade of a sculptor, and modelled
-an image of the Charites still to be seen on the Acropolis of Athens.
-His skill was certainly not of a mediocre order, and, had he so wished,
-he could, like the most renowned artists, have portrayed an athlete
-throwing a discus or bandaging his head. But he abandoned like works
-to devote himself to the quest of wisdom, as commanded by the oracle.
-Henceforth, he attached himself to young men, not for the purpose of
-measuring the proportions of their bodies but solely to teach them that
-which is honest. He preferred those whose soul was beautiful to those
-of perfect form, differing in this respect from sculptors, painters and
-debauchees, who consider only external<a class="pagenum" name="Page_43" id="Page_43" title="43"> </a> beauty, despising the inner
-comeliness. You are aware that Phidias engraved on the great toe of his
-Jupiter the name of an athlete, because he was handsome, and without
-considering whether he was pure.”</p>
-
-<p>“Hence it is,” was Gallio’s summing up, “that we do not sing the
-praises of sculptors, while bestowing them on their works.”</p>
-
-<p>“By Hercules!” exclaimed Lollius, “I do not know whether to admire most
-that Venus or that Faun. The goddess seems to reflect coolness from
-the water still dripping from her. She is truly the desire of gods and
-men; do you not fear, Gallio, that some night, a lout concealed in your
-grounds may subject her to an outrage similar to the one inflicted by a
-profane youth, so it is reported, on the Aphrodite of the Cnidians? The
-priestesses of her temple discovered one morning traces of the outrage
-on the body of the goddess, and travellers affirm that from that day
-until now she bears the indelible mark of her defilement. The audacity
-of the man and the patience of the Immortal One are to be wondered at.”</p>
-
-<p>“The crime did not remain unpunished,” affirmed Gallio. “The
-sacrilegious profaner flung himself into the sea, and fell on the rocks
-a shapeless mass. He was never again seen.”</p>
-
-<p>“There can be no doubt,” resumed Lollius,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_44" id="Page_44" title="44"> </a> “that the Venus of Cnidus
-surpasses all others in beauty. But the artisan who carved the one in
-your grounds, Gallio, knew how to make marble plastic. Look at that
-Faun; he is laughing, and saliva moistens his teeth and his lips; his
-cheeks have the fresh bloom of the apple: his whole body glistens with
-youth. However, I prefer the Venus to the Faun.”</p>
-
-<p>Raising his right arm, Apollodorus said:</p>
-
-<p>“Most gentle Lollius, just think a bit, and you will fain admit that
-a like preference is pardonable in an ignorant individual who follows
-his instincts and who reasons not, but that it is not permitted to one
-as wise as yourself. That Venus cannot be as beautiful as that Faun,
-for the body of woman enjoys a perfection lesser than that of man, and
-the copy of a thing which is less perfect can never equal in beauty the
-copy of a thing that is more perfect. No doubt can assuredly exist,
-Lollius, that the body of woman is less beautiful than that of man,
-since it contains a less beautiful soul. Women are vain, quarrelsome,
-their mind occupied with trifles and incapable of elevated thoughts,
-while sickness oftentimes obscures their intellect.”</p>
-
-<p>“And yet,” remarked Gallio, “both in Rome and in Athens, virgins and
-matrons have been held worthy of presiding over sacred rites and of
-placing offerings on the altars. Nay more, the gods have<a class="pagenum" name="Page_45" id="Page_45" title="45"> </a> at times
-selected virgins to give utterance to their oracular words, or to
-reveal the future to men. Cassandra wore the bands of Apollo about her
-head and prophesied the discomfiture of the Trojans. Juturna, to whom
-the love of a god gave immortality, was entrusted with the guardianship
-of the fountains of Rome.”</p>
-
-<p>“Quite true,” replied Apollodorus. “But the gods sell dearly to virgins
-the privilege of interpreting their wishes, and of announcing future
-events. While conferring on them the power of seeing that which is
-hidden, they deprive them of their reason and inflict madness on them.
-I will, however, Gallio, grant you that some women are better than some
-men and that some men are less good than some women. This arises from
-the fact that the two sexes are not as distinct and separate from each
-other as one would believe, and that, quite on the contrary, there
-is something of man in many women, and of woman in many a man. The
-following is the explanation of this commingling:</p>
-
-<p>“The ancestors of the men who nowadays people the earth sprang from
-the hands of Prometheus, who, to give them shape, kneaded the clay
-as does the potter. He did not confine himself to shaping with his
-hands a single couple. Far too prudent and too industrious to cause
-the entire human race to grow from one seed and from a single vessel,
-he<a class="pagenum" name="Page_46" id="Page_46" title="46"> </a> undertook the manufacture of a multitude of women and men, in
-order to secure at once to humanity the advantage of numbers. In order
-better to carry out so difficult a work, he modelled separately at the
-outset all the parts which were to constitute both male and female
-bodies. He fashioned as many lungs, livers, hearts, brains, bladders,
-spleens, intestines, matrices and generative organs as were required,
-and, lastly, he made with subtle art, and in sufficient quantity,
-all the organs by means of which human beings might breathe freely,
-feed themselves, and enjoy the reproduction of the species. He forgot
-neither muscles, tendons, bones, blood nor fluids. He next cut out
-skins, intending to place in each one, as in a sack, the requisite
-articles. All these component parts of men and women were duly
-finished, and nothing remained but to put them together, when he was of
-a sudden invited to partake of supper at the residence of Bacchus. He
-went thither, crowned with roses, and indulged too freely in libations
-to the god, returning with tottering steps to his workshop. His brain
-befogged with the fumes of wine, his eyesight dimmed, and his hands
-shaky, he resumed his task, greatly to our misfortune. The distribution
-of organs among human beings seemed to him an easy enough pastime. He
-knew not what he was about, and was perfectly contented with his job,
-however<a class="pagenum" name="Page_47" id="Page_47" title="47"> </a> badly he accomplished it. He was constantly and inadvertently
-allotting to woman that which was proper to man, and to man the things
-pertaining to woman.</p>
-
-<p>“Thus it came about that our first parents were composed of
-ill-assorted pieces which did not harmonise. And, having mated
-by choice or at haphazard, they produced beings as incoherent as
-themselves. Thus has it come about, through the Titan’s fault, that we
-see so many virile women and so many effeminate men. This also explains
-the contradictory characteristics to be met with in the firmest of
-minds and how it is that the most determined character is perpetually
-false to itself. And, finally, this is why we are all at variance with
-our own selves.”</p>
-
-<p>Lucius Cassius expressed condemnation of this fable, because it did not
-teach man to conquer himself, but on the contrary induced him to yield
-to nature.</p>
-
-<p>Gallio pointed out that the poets and philosophers gave a different
-interpretation as to the origin of the world and the creation of
-mankind.</p>
-
-<p>“The fables told by the Greeks,” he said, “should not be believed
-in too blindly, nor should we hold as truthful, Apollodorus, what
-they state in particular concerning the stones thrown by Pyrrha. The
-philosophers are not in accord among themselves<a class="pagenum" name="Page_48" id="Page_48" title="48"> </a> as to the principle
-presiding over the creation of the world, and leave us in doubt as to
-whether the earth was produced by water, by air, or, as seems more
-credible, by the subtile heat. But the Greeks wish to know all things,
-and so they forge ingenious falsehood. How much better it is to confess
-our ignorance. The past is as much concealed from us as is the future;
-we are circumscribed by two dense clouds, in the forgetfulness of
-what was, and in the uncertainty of what shall be. And yet we suffer
-ourselves to be the playthings of an inquisitive desire to become
-acquainted with the causes of things, and a consuming anxiety incites
-us to ponder over the destinies of mankind and of the world.”</p>
-
-<p>“It is true,” sighed Cassius, “that we are everlastingly striving to
-penetrate the impenetrable future. We toil at this quest with all our
-might, and call to our aid all kinds of means. Anon we think to attain
-our object by meditation; again, by prayer and ecstasy. Some of us
-consult the oracles of the gods; others, fearing not to do that which
-is forbidden, appeal to the augurs of Chaldæa, or try the Babylonian
-spells. Futile and sacrilegious curiosity! For, of what advantage would
-be to us the knowledge of future things, since they are inevitable!
-Nevertheless the wise men, still more so than the vulgar herd, feel
-the desire of delving into the future and of, so to speak, hurling
-themselves into<a class="pagenum" name="Page_49" id="Page_49" title="49"> </a> it. It is doubtless because they hope thus to escape
-the present which inflicts on them so much that is sad and distasteful.
-Why should not the men of to-day be goaded with the desire of fleeing
-from these wretched times? We are living in an age replete with deeds
-of cowardice, abounding in ignominious acts, and fertile in crimes.”</p>
-
-<p>Cassius spoke at some length in depreciation of the times in which he
-lived. He lamented the fact that the Romans, fallen from their ancient
-virtues, no longer found any pleasure except in the consumption of the
-oysters of the Lucrine lake and of the birds of Phasis river, and that
-they had no taste except for mummers, chariot-drivers, and gladiators.
-He deplored the ills which the Empire was suffering from, the insolent
-luxury of the great, the contemptible avidity of the clients, and the
-savage depravity of the multitude.</p>
-
-<p>Gallio and his brother agreed with him. They loved virtue.
-Nevertheless, they had nothing in common with the patricians of old
-who, having no other care than the fattening of their swine, and the
-performance of the sacred rites, conquered the world for the better
-administration of their farms. This nobility of the byre, instituted
-by Romulus and Remus, was long since extinct. The patrician families
-created by the divine Julius and by the Emperor Augustus, had passed
-away. Intelligent<a class="pagenum" name="Page_50" id="Page_50" title="50"> </a> men from all the provinces of the Empire had stepped
-into their places. Romans in Rome, they were nowhere strangers. They
-greatly surpassed the old Cethegus family by their refined minds
-and humane feelings. They did not regret the Republic; they did not
-regret liberty, the recollection of which recalled simultaneously
-proscriptions and civil wars. They honoured Cato as the heroic figure
-of another age, without wishing to see so exalted a type of virtue
-arise on top of fresh ruins. They looked upon the Augustan epoch and
-the first years of Tiberius as the happiest the world had ever known,
-since the Golden Age had existed in the imagination of the poets only.
-They lamented the fact that the new order of things, which had promised
-the world a long reign of felicity, should have so promptly burdened
-Rome with an unheard of shame unknown even to the contemporaries of
-Marius and Sulla. They had, during the madness of Caius, seen the best
-citizens branded with a hot iron, sentenced to the mines, to labour on
-the roads, thrown to wild beasts, fathers compelled to be present at
-the agony of their children, and men shining by their virtues, such as
-Cremutius Cordus, suffer themselves to die of starvation, in order to
-cheat the tyrant of their death. To Rome’s shame, be it said, Caligula
-respected neither his sisters nor the most illustrious dames. And, what
-filled these rhetors and philosophers<a class="pagenum" name="Page_51" id="Page_51" title="51"> </a> with as great an indignation as
-the one they felt over the rape of the matrons and the assassination
-of the best citizens, were the crimes perpetrated by Caius against
-eloquence and letters. This madman had conceived the idea of destroying
-the poems of Homer, and had caused to be removed from all bookshelves
-the writings, the portraits, and the names of Virgil and of Livy.
-Finally, Gallio could not forgive him for having compared the style of
-Seneca to mortar without cement.</p>
-
-<p>They dreaded Claudius in a somewhat lesser degree, but despised him
-the more for all that. They ridiculed his pumpkin-like head and his
-seal-like voice. That old savant was not a monster of wickedness.
-The worst they could reproach him with was his weakness. But, in the
-exercise of the sovereign power, such weakness became at times as cruel
-as the cruelty of Caius. They also bore domestic grievances against
-him. If Caius had held Seneca up to ridicule, Claudius had banished him
-to Corsica. It is true that he had subsequently recalled him to Rome
-and conferred a prætorship on him. But they showed him no gratitude
-for having thus carried out the behests of Agrippina, in ignorance of
-what he was commanding. Indignant but long suffering, they left it
-to the Empress to determine the fate of the aged man, and the choice
-of the new prince. Many rumours were current<a class="pagenum" name="Page_52" id="Page_52" title="52"> </a> to the shame of the
-unchaste and cruel daughter of Germanicus. They heeded them not, and
-sang the praises of the illustrious woman to whom the Senecas owed
-the termination of their misfortune and their rise in honours. As
-will oftentimes happen, their convictions were in harmony with their
-interests. A painful experience of public life had left unshaken their
-trust in the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</i> established by the divine Augustus, a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</i>
-placed on a firmer basis by Tiberius, and under which they filled high
-positions. They were reckoning on a new master to redress the evils
-engendered by the masters of the Empire.</p>
-
-<p>Gallio produced from the folds of his toga a roll of papyrus.</p>
-
-<p>“Dear friends,” he said, “I have learnt this morning, through letters
-from Rome, that our young prince has married Octavia, the daughter of
-Cæsar.”</p>
-
-<p>A murmur of approval greeted the news.</p>
-
-<p>“We should indeed,” continued Gallio, “congratulate ourselves over
-a union, by virtue of which the prince, combining with his former
-qualifications those of husband and of son-in-law, becomes henceforth
-the equal of Britannicus. My brother Seneca never ceases praising in
-his letters to me the eloquence and gentleness of his pupil who sheds
-lustre on his youth by pleading before the Senate in the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_53" id="Page_53" title="53"> </a> presence of
-the Emperor. He has not yet completed his sixteenth year, yet he has
-already won the cases of three unfortunate or guilty cities&mdash;Ilion,
-Bolonia, and Apamea.”</p>
-
-<p>“He has not then,” asked Lucius Cassius, “inherited the evil
-disposition of the Domitians, his ancestors?”</p>
-
-<p>“Indeed he has not,” replied Gallio. “It is Germanicus who lives anew
-in him.”</p>
-
-<p>Annæus Mela, who was not looked upon as a sycophant, joined in the
-praise of the son of Agrippina. His praises appeared affecting and
-sincere, since he pledged them, so to speak, on the head of his son,
-who was still of tender age.</p>
-
-<p>“Nero is chaste, modest, of a kindly disposition, and religious. My
-little Lucan, who is dearer to me than my eyes, was his play- and
-school-mate. Together they practised declamation in the Greek and Latin
-languages. Together they attempted to indite verse. Never did Nero, in
-the course of these contests of skill at versification, manifest the
-slightest symptom of jealousy. Quite the contrary, he enjoyed praising
-his rival’s verses, which, in spite of his tender age, revealed traces
-here and there of a consuming energy. He sometimes seemed happy to be
-surpassed by the nephew of his teacher. Such was the charming modesty
-of the prince of youth! Poets will some day compare the friendship<a class="pagenum" name="Page_54" id="Page_54" title="54"> </a> of
-Nero and Lucan with that of Euryalus and Nisus.”</p>
-
-<p>“Nero,” the proconsul went on to say, “displays with the ardour of
-youth a gentle and merciful spirit. Time will but strengthen such
-virtues.</p>
-
-<p>“Claudius, when adopting him, has wisely acquiesced in the hope
-expressed by the Senate and the wish of the people. In so doing, he has
-removed from the Imperial succession a child overwhelmed by the shame
-of his mother, and has now, by giving Octavia to Nero, secured the
-accession of a youthful Cæsar whom Rome will delight in. The respectful
-son of an honoured mother, the zealous disciple of a philosopher, Nero,
-whose adolescence is illumined with the most agreeable qualities, Nero,
-our hope and the hope of the world, will remember, when clad in purple,
-the teachings of the Portico, and will rule the universe with justice
-and moderation.”</p>
-
-<p>“We welcome the omen,” remarked Lollius. “May an era of happiness dawn
-upon the human race!”</p>
-
-<p>“’Tis difficult to predict the future,” said Gallio. “Still, we
-experience no doubts regarding the eternity of the City. The oracles
-have promised Rome an empire without end, and it would be sacrilegious
-not to put our faith in the gods. Shall I reveal to you my fondest
-hope? I joyfully expect the time when peace will reign for ever on the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_55" id="Page_55" title="55"> </a>
-earth, following upon the chastising of the Parthians. Yes indeed, we
-may, without fear of deceiving ourselves, herald the end of war so
-hated by mothers. Who is there to disturb the Roman peace henceforth?
-Our eagles have spread to the confines of the universe. All the nations
-have experienced our strength and our mercy. The Arab, the Sabæan,
-the dweller on the slopes of the Hæmus, the Sarmatian who quenches
-his thirst with the blood of his steed, the Sygambri of the curly
-locks, the woolly-headed Ethiopian, all come in hordes to worship Rome
-their protectress. Whence would new barbarians spring? Is it likely
-that the icy plains of the North or the burning sands of Libya hold
-in store enemies of the Roman nation? All Barbarians, won over to
-our friendship, will lay down their arms, and Rome, the white-haired
-great-grandmother, tranquil in her old age, will see the nations
-respectfully grouped about her as her adopted children, dwelling in
-harmony and love.”</p>
-
-<p>All signified their approval of the foregoing sentiments, excepting
-Cassius, who shook his head in disagreement.</p>
-
-<p>He felt a pride in his military ancestry while the glory of arms, so
-greatly extolled by poets and rhetors, kindled his enthusiasm.</p>
-
-<p>“I doubt, my friend Gallio,” he commented,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_56" id="Page_56" title="56"> </a> “that nations will ever
-cease to hate and fear one another. To tell the truth, I should not
-desire such a consummation. Did war cease, what would become of
-strength of character, grandeur of soul, and love of country? Courage
-and devotion would be virtues out of date.”</p>
-
-<p>“Rest assured, Lucius,” said Gallio, “that when men shall cease to
-conquer one another, they will strive to subdue their own selves. That
-is the most virtuous attempt they can make, and the most noble use
-to which they can put their bravery and magnanimity. Yes indeed, the
-august mother whose wrinkles and whose hairs, blanched by centuries, we
-worship, Rome, will establish universal peace. Then shall the enjoyment
-of life be realised. Life under certain conditions is worth living.
-Life is a tiny flame between two infinite shadows; ’tis our share of
-the divine essence. During the term of his life, a man is similar to
-the gods.”</p>
-
-<p>While Gallio was thus discoursing, a dove perched itself on the
-shoulder of the Venus, whose marble contours gleamed among the myrtles.</p>
-
-<p>“My dear Gallio,” said Lollius with a smile, “the bird of Aphrodite
-takes delight in thy words. They are gentle and full of gracefulness.”</p>
-
-<p>A slave approached, bearing cool wine, and the friends of the proconsul
-discoursed of the gods. Apollodorus was of opinion that it was not easy
-to<a class="pagenum" name="Page_57" id="Page_57" title="57"> </a> grasp their nature. Lollius doubted their very existence.</p>
-
-<p>“When thunder peals,” he said, “it all depends upon the philosopher
-whether it is the cloud or the god who has thundered.”</p>
-
-<p>Cassius, however, did not countenance such thoughtless arguments. He
-believed in the gods of the Republic. While entertaining doubts as to
-the extent of their providence, he asserted their existence, as he
-did not wish to differ from humanity on an essential point. And to
-support his belief in the faith of his ancestors, he had recourse to an
-argument he had learnt from the Greeks.</p>
-
-<p>“The gods exist,” he said. “Men have formed their idea of what they are
-like. Now, it is impossible to conceive an image not based on reality.
-How would it be possible to see Minerva, Neptune, and Mercury, were
-there neither Mercury, nor Neptune, nor Minerva?”</p>
-
-<p>“You have convinced me,” said Lollius mockingly. “The old woman who
-sells honey-cakes in the Forum, outside the basilica, has seen the
-god Typhon, he with the shaggy head of an ass, and a monster belly.
-He threw her on her back, threw her clothes over her ears, chastised
-her while keeping time to each resounding blow, and left her for dead,
-after polluting her in a disgusting fashion. She has herself told how,
-even as Antiope, she had<a class="pagenum" name="Page_58" id="Page_58" title="58"> </a> been favoured with the visit of an immortal
-god. It is certain that the god Typhon exists, since he committed an
-outrage on an old cake-selling hag.”</p>
-
-<p>“In spite of thy mockery, Marcus, I do not doubt the existence of the
-gods,” resumed Cassius. “And I believe that they enjoy a human form,
-since it is under that form that they always show themselves to us,
-whether we slumber or whether we are awake.”</p>
-
-<p>“It would be better,” remarked Apollodorus, “to say that men possess
-the divine form, since the gods existed before them.”</p>
-
-<p>“My dear Apollodorus,” exclaimed Lollius. “You forget that Diana was
-first worshipped under the form of a tree, and that several important
-gods have the shape of an unhewn stone. Cybele is represented, not as a
-woman should be, with two breasts, but with several teats like a bitch
-or a sow. The sun is a god, but being too hot to assume the human form,
-he has taken the shape of a ball; he is a round god.”</p>
-
-<p>Annæus Mela gently censured this academic jesting.</p>
-
-<p>“All that is related about the gods,” he said, “should not be taken
-literally. The vulgar herd calls wheat Ceres, and wine Bacchus. But
-where is to be found the man crazy enough to believe that he drinks and
-eats a god? Let us indulge in a more exalted knowledge of the divine
-nature. The<a class="pagenum" name="Page_59" id="Page_59" title="59"> </a> gods are but the several parts of nature, and they are all
-lost in one god, who is nature in its entirety.”</p>
-
-<p>The proconsul signified his approval of the words of his brother, and
-speaking in a serious strain, defined the attributes of divinity.</p>
-
-<p>“God is the soul of the world; this soul spreads to all parts of the
-universe, infusing motion and life into it. This soul, a creative
-flame, penetrating the inert mass of matter, gave shape to the world,
-governing and preserving it. Divinity, an active force, is essentially
-good. The matter which it has put to good use, being inert and passive,
-is bad in certain of its parts. God has been powerless to change its
-nature. This explains the origin of the evil in the world. Our souls
-are particles of the divine fire into which they will some day be
-merged. Consequently, God is within us and he dwells in particular in
-the virtuous man whose soul is not hampered with gross materialism.
-This wise man, in whom God dwells, is God’s equal. He should not
-implore him, but contain him within himself. And what madness it
-is to pray to God! What an act of impiety it is to petition him!
-It is tantamount to believing that it is possible to enlighten his
-intelligence, to change his heart, and to persuade him to mend his
-behaviour. It is displaying ignorance of the necessity governing his
-immutable<a class="pagenum" name="Page_60" id="Page_60" title="60"> </a> wisdom. He is subjected to Destiny, or, to be more accurate,
-he is Destiny. His ways are laws to which he is like ourselves
-subjected. For once that he commands, he obeys for ever. Free and
-powerful in his submission, it is to himself that he shows obedience.
-All the happenings in the world are the manifestations of sovereign
-intentions originating with himself. His helplessness against himself
-is infinite.”</p>
-
-<p>Gallio’s speech was applauded by his hearers. Apollodorus, however,
-craved permission to submit a few objections.</p>
-
-<p>“You are right, Gallio,” he said, “when you believe that Jupiter is
-at the mercy of Anankè and I hold with you that Anankè is the first
-among the immortal goddesses. But it appears to me that your god,
-above all admirable in his compass and his perpetuity, had better
-intentions than luck when he created the world, since he found nothing
-better wherewith to knead it than a rebellious and ingrate substance,
-and that the material betrays the workman. I cannot but feel for him
-over his discomfiture. The potters of Athens are more fortunate. They
-procure, for the purpose of making vases, a delicate and plastic clay
-which readily takes and preserves the contours they give it. Hence do
-their goblets and amphoræ present an agreeable form. Their curves are
-graceful, and the painter limns with ease figures<a class="pagenum" name="Page_61" id="Page_61" title="61"> </a> pleasing to the
-eye, such as old Silenus bestriding his ass, the toilet of Aphrodite,
-and the chaste Amazons. When I come to think of it, Gallio, I am of
-the opinion that if your god was less fortunate than the potters of
-Athens, ’tis for the reason that he lacked wisdom and that he was a
-poor artisan. The material at his disposal was not of the best. Still,
-it was not devoid of all serviceable properties, as you have yourself
-confessed. Nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad. A thing may be
-bad if put to a certain use, while it may be excellent in some other.
-It would be waste of time to plant olive-trees in the clay used in
-fashioning amphoræ. The tree of Pallas would not grow in the light and
-pure soil of which are made the beautiful vases which our victorious
-athletes receive, blushing the while with pride and modesty. It seems
-to me, Gallio, that your god, when fashioning the world with a material
-that was not suitable for the undertaking, was guilty of the mistake
-which a vine-dresser of Megara would be committing, were he to plant
-a vine in modelling clay, or were some worker in ceramics to select
-for the making of amphoræ the stony soil which affords nutriment to
-the clusters of the grape-vine. Your god, you say, made the universe.
-He ought certainly to have given form to some other thing, in order
-to make suitable use of his material. Since the substance, as<a class="pagenum" name="Page_62" id="Page_62" title="62"> </a> you
-assert, proved rebellious to him, either through its inherent inertia,
-or through some other bad quality, should he have persisted in putting
-it to a use it could not respond to, and, as the saying goes, carve
-his bow out of a cypress? The secret of industry does not consist in
-accomplishing much, but in doing good work. Why did he not content
-himself with creating some small thing, say a gnat, or a drop of water,
-but finish it to perfection?</p>
-
-<p>“I might add further remarks about your god, Gallio, and ask you, for
-instance, if you do not entertain a fear that from his constant rubbing
-against matter, he may wear out, just as a millstone becomes worn in
-the long run in the course of grinding wheat. But such questions are
-not to be solved in a hurry, and the time of a proconsul is precious.
-Permit me at least to say to you that you are not justified in
-believing that your god rules and preserves the world, since, according
-to your own admission, he deprived himself of intelligence after having
-become acquainted with all things; of will-power, after having willed
-all things, and of power, following upon his ability to do what he
-saw fit. Herein again lay, on his part, a serious mistake, for he was
-thus an instrument in depriving himself of the means of correcting his
-imperfect work. So far as I am concerned, I am inclined to believe that
-god is in reality, not the one you have conceived, but<a class="pagenum" name="Page_63" id="Page_63" title="63"> </a> indeed the
-matter he discovered on a certain day, and which the Greeks have styled
-chaos. You are mistaken in your belief that matter is inert. It is ever
-in motion, and its perpetual activity keeps life a-going throughout the
-universe.”</p>
-
-<p>Thus spake the philosopher Apollodorus. Gallio, who had listened to
-his speech with some degree of impatience, denied that he had fallen a
-victim to the mistakes and contradictions with which the Greek charged
-him. But he failed in refuting successfully the arguments of his
-opponent, as his intellect was not a subtle one and because he demanded
-principally of philosophy the means of rendering men virtuous, and
-because he was interested in useful truths only.</p>
-
-<p>“Try to grasp, Apollodorus,” he said, “that God is none other than
-nature. Nature and himself are one. God and Nature are the two names of
-a single being, just as Novatus and Gallio designate one and the same
-man. God, if you prefer, is divine reason commingling with the earth.
-You need have no fear that he will wear out through this amalgamation,
-since his <a name="tenuous" id="tenuous"></a><ins title="Original has tenous">tenuous</ins> substance participates of the fire which
-consumes all matter while remaining unchanged.</p>
-
-<p>“But should, nevertheless,” proceeded Gallio, “my doctrine embrace
-ill-assorted ideas, do not blame me for it, my dear Apollodorus, but
-rather<a class="pagenum" name="Page_64" id="Page_64" title="64"> </a> give me praise because I suffer a few contradictions to find
-a place in my mind. Were I not conciliatory as regards my own ideas,
-were I to confer upon a single system an exclusive preference, I could
-no longer tolerate the freedom of every opinion; having destroyed my
-own freedom of thought, I could not readily tolerate it in the case
-of others, and I should forfeit the respect due to every doctrine
-established or professed by a sincere man. The gods forbid that I
-should see my opinion prevail to the exclusion of any other, and
-exercise an absolute sway on other minds. Conjure up a picture, my
-dear friends, of the state of manners and morals, were a sufficient
-number of men firmly to believe that they were the sole possessors
-of the truth, if, by some impossible chance, they were thoroughly
-agreed as to that truth. A too narrow piety among the Athenians, who
-are nevertheless full of wisdom and of doubt, was the cause of the
-banishment of Anaxagoras and of the death of Socrates. What would
-happen were millions of men enslaved by one solitary idea concerning
-the nature of the gods? The genius of the Greeks and the prudence of
-our ancestors made allowance for doubt, and tolerated the worship of
-Jupiter under several names. No sooner should a powerful sect come on
-this ailing earth and proclaim that Jupiter has one name only, than
-blood would flow the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_65" id="Page_65" title="65"> </a> world over, and no longer would there be but
-one Caius whose madness should threaten the human race with death.
-All the men of such a sect would be so many Caiuses. They would
-<a name="face" id="face"></a><ins title="Original has facedeath">face death</ins> for a name. For a name, they would kill, since
-it is rather in the nature of men to kill than to die on behalf of
-what seems to them true and most excellent. Hence it is better to base
-public order on the diversity of opinions, than to seek to establish
-it on a universal consent to one and the same belief. A like unanimous
-consent could never be realised, and in seeking to obtain it, men would
-become stupid and maddened. For, indeed, the most patent truth is but a
-vain jangle of words to the men on whom it is attempted to impose it.
-You would compel me to believe a thing which you understand, but which
-passes my understanding. You would thus be forcing upon me not a thing
-that is intelligible, but one that is incomprehensible. And I am nearer
-you when holding a different belief, one which I understand. For, in
-that case, both of us are making use of our reason, and we both possess
-an intelligent comprehension of our own belief.”</p>
-
-<p>“Enough of all this,” remarked Lollius. “Educated men will never
-combine for the purpose of stifling all other doctrines to the
-advantage of a single one. As to the vulgar herd, who cares to teach<a class="pagenum" name="Page_66" id="Page_66" title="66"> </a>
-it that Jupiter has six hundred names, or a single one?”</p>
-
-<p>Cassius, slow of utterance, and of a serious turn of mind, spoke next.</p>
-
-<p>“Beware, Gallio,” he said, “lest the existence of God, such as
-expounded by you, be not in contradiction with the beliefs of our
-forefathers. It matters little, after all, whether your arguments are
-better or worse than those of Apollodorus. What we have to consider
-is the fatherland. To its religion does Rome owe her virtues and her
-power. To destroy our gods is to compass our own destruction.”</p>
-
-<p>“You need not fear, my friend,” rejoined Gallio with some show of
-animation, “have no fear, I repeat, that I deny in an insolent spirit
-the heavenly protectors of the Empire. The only divinity which the
-philosophers acknowledge embodies within itself all the gods, just as
-humanity embraces all men. The gods whose worship was instituted by the
-wisdom of our forefathers, Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Quirinus, and
-Hercules, constitute the most august parts of the universal providence,
-and no less than the whole do these parts exist. No, indeed, I am not
-an impious man, nor inimical to the laws. None respects the sacred
-things more than Gallio.”</p>
-
-<p>No one seemed disposed to dispute these ideas.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_67" id="Page_67" title="67"> </a> Thereupon Lollius,
-bringing the conversation back to its starting-point, remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“We have been seeking to penetrate the veil of the future. What are
-man’s destinies, according to you, my friends, after his demise?”</p>
-
-<p>In reply to this question, Annæus Mela promised immortality to heroes
-and wise men, while denying it to the common of mankind.</p>
-
-<p>“It passes belief,” he said, “that misers, gluttons, and mean-spirited
-men should possess an immortal soul. Could so singular a privilege
-be the portion of coarse and silly oafs? I cannot entertain such a
-thought. It would be an insult to the majority of the gods to believe
-that they have decreed the immortality of the boor who wots only of his
-goats and cheeses, or of the freedman, richer than Crœsus, who had no
-other cares in the world than to check the accounts of his stewards.
-Why, good gods, should they be provided with a soul? What sort of a
-figure would they present among heroes and wise men in the Elysian
-fields? These wretches, like so many others here below, are incapable
-of realising humanity’s short-spanned life. How could they realise a
-life of longer duration? Vulgar souls are snuffed out at the hour of
-death, or they may for a while whirl about our globe, to vanish in the
-dense strata of the atmosphere. Virtue only, by making man the equal of
-the gods, makes them<a class="pagenum" name="Page_68" id="Page_68" title="68"> </a> participate in their immortality. To quote the
-poet:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>“‘Illustrious virtue never descends into the Stygian shades.
-Lead a hero’s life, and the fates will not consign thee to the
-pitiless river of forgetfulness. When comes thy last day, glory
-will open to thee the path of heaven.’</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>“Let us realise our condition. We must all die, and all that we are
-must die. The man of shining virtue simply escapes the common destiny
-by becoming god, and by obtaining his admission into Olympus among the
-Heroes and the Gods.”</p>
-
-<p>“But he is not conscious of his own apotheosis,” said Marcus Lollius.
-“There does not exist upon earth a slave or a barbarian who is not
-aware that Augustus is a god. But Augustus knows it not. Hence it is
-that our Cæsars journey reluctantly towards the constellations, and
-even now we see Claudius near with blanched face these shadowy honours.”</p>
-
-<p>Gallio shook his head, and remarked, “The poet Euripides has said:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>“‘We love the life which is revealed unto us upon earth, since
-we know of no other.’</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>“Everything that is related concerning the dead is open to doubt, and
-is bound up with fables and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_69" id="Page_69" title="69"> </a> falsehoods. Nevertheless, I believe that
-virtuous men attain an immortality of which they are fully cognisant.
-Let it be clearly understood that they achieve it by their own efforts,
-and not as a recompense conferred by the gods. By what right should
-the immortal gods degrade a virtuous man to the extent of rewarding
-him? The leading of a blameless life is its own reward, and no prize is
-there worthy of virtue, which is its own reward. Let us leave to vulgar
-souls, that they may thereby sustain their wretched fortitude, the
-dread of punishment, and the hope of a reward. Let us love virtue for
-its own sake. Gallio, if what the poets tell of the infernal regions
-be true, if after your death you are arraigned before the tribunal of
-Minos, you may say to him: “Minos shall not judge me. By my actions
-have I been judged.””</p>
-
-<p>“How,” inquired Apollodorus the philosopher, “can the gods give to men
-an immortality they themselves do not enjoy?”</p>
-
-<p>Apollodorus, indeed, did not believe in the immortality of the gods, or
-rather that their sway over the world should be exercised for all time.</p>
-
-<p>He proceeded to develop the reasons for his belief.</p>
-
-<p>“The reign of Jupiter,” he said, “began after the Golden Age. We know
-through the traditions<a class="pagenum" name="Page_70" id="Page_70" title="70"> </a> preserved for us by the poets that the son of
-Saturn succeeded to his father in the governing of the world. Now,
-everything that had a beginning must have an end. It is foolish to
-suppose that anything finite in one part can be infinite in another. It
-would then become necessary to call it finite and infinite as a whole,
-which would be absurd. Anything possessed of an extreme point can be
-measured from that point itself, and could not in any way cease to be
-measured at any point of its extent, without changing its nature, and
-the proper of what is measurable is to be comprised between two extreme
-points. We may therefore make up our minds that the reign of Jupiter
-will end just as did that of Saturn. As Æschylus has said:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>“‘Jupiter is subordinate to Anankè. He cannot escape his fate.’”</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>Gallio thought the same, for reasons derived from the observation of
-nature.</p>
-
-<p>“I consider with you, Apollodorus, that the reigns of the gods are
-not immortal, and the observation of the celestial phenomena inclines
-me to this belief. The heavens, as well as the earth, are subject
-to corruption, and the divine palaces, liable to ruin just as the
-dwellings of mankind, crumble under the weight of the centuries. I have
-seen stones fall from the aerial regions. They<a class="pagenum" name="Page_71" id="Page_71" title="71"> </a> were blackened and
-corroded by fire, and bore testimony to a celestial conflagration.</p>
-
-<p>“The bodies of the gods, Apollodorus, are not any more exempt from
-injury than their dwellings. If it be true, as Homer teaches, that the
-gods, inhabitants of Olympus, impregnate the flanks of goddesses and
-mortal women, it is assuredly because they are not themselves immortal,
-in spite of their life’s span being greater than that of mankind,
-and hence it is patent that fate subjects them to the necessity of
-transmitting a life which they may not enjoy for ever.</p>
-
-<p>“In truth,” said Lollius, “it is hardly to be conceived that immortals
-should produce children in the same way as human beings and animals,
-or even that they should possess organs adapted to such a purpose. But
-perhaps the loves of the gods owe their origin to the mendacity of the
-poets.”</p>
-
-<p>Apollodorus persisted in his assertion that the reign of Jupiter
-would some day cease, supporting his opinion with subtile reasons. He
-prophesied that Prometheus would succeed the son of Saturn.</p>
-
-<p>“Prometheus,” replied Gallio, “was set free by Hercules with the
-consent of Jupiter, and he enjoys in Olympus the happiness he owes to
-his foresight and to his love of mankind. Nothing will ever happen to
-change his happy fate.”</p>
-
-<p>Apollodorus asked him:</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_72" id="Page_72" title="72"> </a>
-“Who then, according to you, Gallio, shall inherit the thunder which
-sets the world a-quaking?”</p>
-
-<p>“Although it may seem audacious to answer this question,” replied
-Gallio, “I think I am competent to do so, and to name Jove’s successor.”</p>
-
-<p>As he spoke, an officer of the basilica, whose duty it was to call
-cases, approached him, and informed him that some suitors were waiting
-for him in court.</p>
-
-<p>The proconsul asked if the matter was one of paramount importance.</p>
-
-<p>“It is a most petty case, Gallio,” replied the officer of the basilica.
-“A man from the harbour of Cenchreæ has just dragged a stranger before
-your tribunal. They are both Jews and of humble condition. They are
-<a name="quarrelling" id="quarrelling"></a><ins title="Original has quarelling">quarrelling</ins> over some barbarian custom or some gross
-superstition, as is the wont of Syrians. Here is the minute of their
-case. It is all Punic to the clerk who wrote it.</p>
-
-<p>“The plaintiff sets forth, Gallio, that he is the head of the assembly
-of the Jews or, as one says in Greek, of the synagogue, and he begs
-justice of you against a man from Tarsus, who, recently settled at
-Cenchreæ, goes every Saturday to the synagogue, for the purpose of
-speaking against the Jewish law. ‘It is a scandal and an abomination,
-which thou shalt put an end to,’ says the plaintiff, and he clamours
-for the integrity of the privileges belonging<a class="pagenum" name="Page_73" id="Page_73" title="73"> </a> to the children of
-Israel. The defendant claims for all those who believe his teachings
-adoption and incorporation into the family of a man named Abraham, and
-he threatens the plaintiff with the divine ire. You see, Gallio, that
-the case is a petty and ambiguous one. It rests with you to decide
-whether you will take the case yourself, or whether you will leave it
-to be judged by a lesser magistrate.”</p>
-
-<p>The proconsul’s friends begged him not to disturb himself for so
-miserable an affair.</p>
-
-<p>“I make it my duty,” he said in response to their prayers, “to follow
-in this respect the rules laid down by the divine Augustus. I must
-therefore try personally, not only important cases, but also smaller
-ones, when the jurisprudence concerning them has not been determined.
-Certain light cases recur daily and are of importance, if only for
-their frequency. It is meet that I should personally try one of each
-class. A judgment rendered by a proconsul serves as an example, and
-establishes a precedent in law.”</p>
-
-<p>“You deserve praise, Gallio,” said Lollius, “for the zeal you display
-in the fulfilment of your consular duties. But, acquainted as I am with
-your wisdom, I doubt whether it is agreeable for you to render justice.
-That which men honour with this title is really an administration of
-base<a class="pagenum" name="Page_74" id="Page_74" title="74"> </a> prudence and of cruel revenge. Human laws are the daughters of
-fear and anger.”</p>
-
-<p>Gallio protested feebly against this definition. He did not admit that
-human laws bore the character of real justice, saying:</p>
-
-<p>“The punishment of crime consists in its commission. The penalty
-added thereto by the laws is superfluous, and does not fit the crime.
-However, since through the fault of mankind laws there are, we should
-apply them equitably.”</p>
-
-<p>Thereupon he told the officer of the court that he would proceed to the
-tribunal very shortly, and, turning towards his friends, he said:</p>
-
-<p>“To speak truly, I have a special reason for looking into this case
-with my own eyes. I must not neglect any opportunity of keeping an eye
-on these Jews of Cenchreæ, a turbulent, rancorous race, which shows
-contempt for the laws, and which it is not easy to hold in check. If
-ever the peace of Corinth should be troubled, it will be by them. This
-port, where all the ships of the East come to anchor, conceals amid a
-congested mass of warehouses and taverns, a countless horde of thieves,
-eunuchs, soothsayers, sorcerers, lepers, desecraters of graves, and
-assassins. It is the haunt of every abomination and of every form of
-superstition. Isis, Eschmoun, the Phœnician Venus, and the god of the
-Jews, are all worshipped there. I am<a class="pagenum" name="Page_75" id="Page_75" title="75"> </a> alarmed at seeing those unclean
-Jews multiply, rather in the way of fishes than in that of mankind.
-They swarm about the miry streets of the harbour like crabs under the
-rocks.”</p>
-
-<p>“What is more dreadful is that they infest Rome to a like extent,”
-exclaimed Lucius Cassius. “To great Pompey’s own door must be laid
-the crime of introducing this plague of leprosy into the City. He it
-was who committed the wrong of not treating as did our ancestors the
-prisoners he brought from Judæa for his triumphal entry into the City,
-and they have peopled the right bank of the Tiber with their base
-spawn. Dwelling about the base of the Janiculum, amid the tanneries,
-the gut-works, and the fermenting-troughs, in the suburbs whither
-flock all the abominations and horrors of the world, they earn their
-livelihood at the vilest of trades, unloading lighters, selling rags
-and refuse, and exchanging matches for broken glasses. Their women tell
-fortunes in the houses of the wealthy; their children beg from the
-frequenters of Egeria’s groves. As you rightly said, Gallio, hostile to
-the human race and to themselves, they are ever fomenting sedition. A
-few years back, the followers of a certain Chrestus or Cherestus raised
-bloody riots among the Jews. The Porta Portuensis was put to fire and
-sword, and Cæsar was compelled to exercise severe repression, in spite
-of his forbearance.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_76" id="Page_76" title="76"> </a> He expelled from Rome the leaders of the movement.”</p>
-
-<p>“Full well do I know it,” said Gallio. “Several of these exiles came to
-Cenchreæ, among others a Jew and a Jewess from the Pontus, who still
-dwell there, following some humble trade. I believe that they weave
-the coarse stuffs of Cilicia. I have not learnt anything noteworthy
-in regard to the partisans of Chrestus. As to Chrestus himself, I am
-ignorant of what has become of him, and whether he is still of this
-world.”</p>
-
-<p>“I am as ignorant on this score as you are, Gallio,” resumed Lucius
-Cassius, “and no one will ever know it. These vile wretches do not so
-much as attain celebrity in the annals of crime. Moreover, there are so
-many slaves of the name of Chrestus that it would be no easy matter to
-distinguish a particular one amid the throng.</p>
-
-<p>“It is but a trifling matter that the Jews should cause tumult within
-the low purlieus where their number and their lowliness protect
-them from supervision. They swarm through the city, they ingratiate
-themselves into families, and are everywhere a source of trouble. They
-shout in the Forum on behalf of the agitators who pay them, and these
-despicable foreigners incite the citizens to a hatred of one another.
-Too long have we endured their presence in popular assemblages, and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_77" id="Page_77" title="77"> </a>
-for a long time now have public speakers avoided running counter to the
-opinion of these wretches, for fear of their insults. Obstinate in the
-observance of their barbarian law, they wish to subject others to it,
-and they find adepts among the Asiatics, and even among the Greeks.
-And, what is hardly to be credited, they impose their customs on the
-Latins themselves. There are, in the City, whole quarters where all the
-shops are closed on their Sabbath day. Oh the shame of Rome! And, while
-corrupting the lowly folk among whom they dwell, their kings, admitted
-into Cæsar’s palace, insolently practise their superstitions, and
-set to all citizens a detestable and noted example. Thus do the Jews
-inoculate Italy on all sides with an oriental venom.”</p>
-
-<p>Annæus Mela, who had travelled over the whole of the Roman world,
-sought to make his friends realise the extent of the evil they deplored.</p>
-
-<p>“The Jews corrupt the whole world,” he said. “There is not a Greek
-city, there are hardly any barbarian towns where work does not cease
-on the seventh day, where lamps are not lit, where their keeping of
-fast-days is not followed, and where the abstaining from the flesh of
-certain animals is not observed in imitation of them.</p>
-
-<p>“I have met in Alexandria an aged Jew not lacking in intelligence, who
-was even versed in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_78" id="Page_78" title="78"> </a> Greek literature. He rejoiced at the progress of
-his religion in the Empire. ‘In proportion to the knowledge foreigners
-acquire of our laws,’ he told me, ‘do they find them pleasant, and they
-conform readily to them, both Romans and Greeks, those who dwell on
-the mainland and the people of the isles, Eastern and Western nations,
-Europe and Asia.’ The ancient one spoke perhaps with some degree of
-exaggeration. Still one sees a number of Greeks yielding to the beliefs
-of the Jews.”</p>
-
-<p>Apollodorus sharply denied such to be the case.</p>
-
-<p>“The Greeks who judaise,” he said, “are not to be met with except
-amid the dregs of the populace, and among the barbarians wandering
-about Greece, as brigands and tramps. The followers of the Stammerer
-may, however, have persuaded some few ignorant Greeks, by inducing
-them to believe that the ideas of Plato are to be found in the Hebrew
-scriptures. Such is the lie which they strive to spread.”</p>
-
-<p>“It is a fact,” replied Gallio, “that the Jews recognise an only,
-invisible, almighty god, who has created the earth. But they are far
-from worshipping him with wisdom. They publicly proclaim that this god
-is the enemy of all that is not Jewish, and that he will not tolerate
-in his temple either the effigies of the other gods, or the statue of
-Cæsar, or his own images. They regard as impious those who<a class="pagenum" name="Page_79" id="Page_79" title="79"> </a> fashion
-out of perishable matter a god the image of man. Various reasons, some
-of them good and in harmony with the ideas which we conceive in regard
-to the divine providence, are adduced why this god should not be given
-expression to in marble or in bronze. But what can be thought, dear
-Apollodorus, of a god sufficiently inimical to the Republic that he
-will not admit in his sanctuary the statues of the Prince? How conceive
-a god who takes offence at the honours rendered to other gods? And
-what opinion can one have of a nation which credits its gods with like
-sentiments! The Jews look upon the gods of the Latins, Greeks and
-Barbarians as hostile gods, and they carry superstition to the point of
-believing that they possess a full and complete knowledge of God, one
-to which nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be subtracted.</p>
-
-<p>“As you are aware, my dear friends, it is not sufficient to tolerate
-every religion; we should honour them all, believe that all are sacred,
-that they are all coequal in the sincerity of those professing them,
-and that similar to arrows shot from various points towards the same
-goal, they all meet in the bosom of God. Alone the religion which only
-tolerates itself, cannot be endured. Were it to be permitted to spread,
-it would absorb all others. Nay, so unsociable a religion is not a
-religion, but<a class="pagenum" name="Page_80" id="Page_80" title="80"> </a> rather an abligion, and no longer a bond that unites
-pious men, but one severing that sacred bond. It is the most impious
-of things. Can, indeed, a greater insult be offered to the deity than
-to worship it under a particular form, while at one and the same time
-dooming it to execration under all the other forms it assumes in the
-eyes of men?</p>
-
-<p>“What! Because I sacrifice to Jupiter crowned with a bushel, I am
-to forbid a foreigner from sacrificing to a Jupiter whose head of
-hair, similar to the flower of the hyacinth, drops uncrowned over his
-shoulders; and that, impious man that I should be, I should still
-consider myself a worshipper of Jupiter! No, by all means no! The
-religious man bound to the immortal gods is equally bound to all men by
-the religion which embraces both the earth and the heavens. Odious is
-the error of the Jews who believe they are pious in that they worship
-their god alone!”</p>
-
-<p>“They suffer themselves to be circumcised in his honour,” spoke Annæus
-Mela. “In order that this mutilation should not be noticed, it is
-necessary, when frequenting the public baths, for them to conceal that
-which should neither be made a display of, nor covered as a thing of
-shame. For it is alike ridiculous for a man to pride himself on, or
-to be ashamed of, what he shares in common with all men. We have good
-cause to dread, my friends, the progress<a class="pagenum" name="Page_81" id="Page_81" title="81"> </a> of Judaic customs in the
-Empire. There is, however, no cause to fear that Romans and Greeks will
-adopt circumcision. It passes belief that this custom is likely to make
-its way among the Barbarians who, however, would feel the disgrace of
-it to a lesser degree, since they are, for the greater part, absurd
-enough to reckon as disgraceful for a man to appear before his fellow
-men in a state of nudity.”</p>
-
-<p>“While I think of it!” exclaimed Lollius. “When our gentle Canidia,
-the flower of the matrons of the Esquiline, sends her beautiful slaves
-to the hot baths, she compels them to wear drawers, as she grudges
-everybody even a view of what is most dear to her about their bodies.
-By Pollux, she will be the cause of their being taken for Jews, an
-insulting supposition, even for a slave.”</p>
-
-<p>Lucius Cassius resumed, revealing the irritation which consumed him:</p>
-
-<p>“I cannot say whether the Jewish folly will overtake the whole world.
-But it is past endurance that this madness should spread among the
-ignorant, that it should be tolerated in the Empire, that this fœtid
-race, which has descended to every form of turpitude, absurd and
-sordid in its manners and customs, impious and villainous in its laws,
-and execrated by the immortal gods, should be suffered to exist. The
-obscene Syrian is corrupting the City<a class="pagenum" name="Page_82" id="Page_82" title="82"> </a> of Rome. We have cast aside with
-contempt our ancient usages, and the salutary methods of discipline
-of our ancestors. We no longer serve these masters of the earth, who
-conquered it for us. Which of us still believes in the haruspices? Who
-is there with any respect for the augurs? Who shows reverence to Mars
-and the divine Twins? Oh the sad neglect of our religious duties! Italy
-has repudiated her indigenous gods, and her tutelary genii. She is
-henceforth on all sides at the mercy of foreign superstitions, and is
-handed over defenceless to the impure horde of oriental priests. Alas,
-did Rome conquer the world only to be conquered by the Jews? Warnings
-have assuredly not been lacking. The overflowing of the Tiber and the
-grain famine are certainly not doubtful manifestations of the divine
-ire. No day passes without its sinister presage. The earth quakes, the
-sun is veiled, while lightning flashes in a clear sky. Wonders follow
-upon wonders. Birds of ill omen have been seen to perch on the summit
-of the Capitol. An ox has been heard to speak on the Etruscan shore.
-Women have brought forth monsters; a wailing voice has sounded amid the
-recreations of the theatre. The statue of Victory has dropped the reins
-of her chariot.”</p>
-
-<p>“The hosts of the celestial palaces,” remarked Lollius, “have strange
-ways of making themselves<a class="pagenum" name="Page_83" id="Page_83" title="83"> </a> heard. If they desire a little more incense,
-or sigh for a few more fat offerings, let them say so plainly, instead
-of expressing their wishes by means of thunder, clouds, crows, bronze
-statues, and two-headed children. Moreover, you must admit, Lucius,
-theirs is a far too one-sided part when they presage the evils
-threatening us, since, in the natural course of things, not a day goes
-by but what brings some individual or public misfortune.”</p>
-
-<p>Gallio exhibited distress at the sorrows of Cassius.</p>
-
-<p>“Claudius,” he remarked, “Claudius, although he is always dozing, has
-deeply felt this great peril. He has complained to the Senate of the
-contempt into which ancient usages have been suffered to fall. Alarmed
-at the progress of foreign superstitions, the Senate has, on his
-recommendation, re-established haruspices. But it is not sufficient
-that the observance of the ceremonial rites of worship should be
-restored; rather is it necessary once more to instil into men’s hearts
-their primitive purity. The souls of virtuous men constitute the proper
-shrine of the gods in this world. Give a home within your hearts to
-past virtues once more, simplicity, good faith, love of the public
-welfare, and the gods will immediately re-enter them. You shall then
-yourselves be temples and altars.”</p>
-
-<p>He spoke, and, taking leave of his friends, entered<a class="pagenum" name="Page_84" id="Page_84" title="84"> </a> his litter, which,
-for some little time past, had been awaiting him near a clump of
-myrtle-bushes to convey him to the tribunal.</p>
-
-<p>His friends had risen from their seats, and leaving the grounds,
-followed leisurely behind him under a double portico, so disposed as to
-afford shadow at all hours of the day, and leading from the walls of
-the villa to the basilica where the proconsul dispensed justice.</p>
-
-<p>By the way, Lucius Cassius expressed to Mela his regret at the oblivion
-into which the ancient methods of discipline had fallen.</p>
-
-<p>Marcus Lollius, placing a hand on the shoulder of Apollodorus, said:</p>
-
-<p>“It seems to me that neither our gentle Gallio nor Mela, nor even
-Cassius, have stated their reasons for their deep hatred of the Jews.
-I think I know, and I am going to tell you, most dear Apollodorus.
-The Romans who offer up to the gods a white sow ornamented with white
-bands, execrate the Jews who refuse to partake of pork. It is not in
-vain that the fates sent to the pious Æneas a white female boar as a
-presage. Had the gods not studded with oaks the wild realms of Evander
-and Turnus, Rome would not be to-day the mistress of the world. The
-acorns of Latium fattened the swine whose flesh has alone appeased
-the insatiable hunger of the magnanimous descendants of Remus. Our
-Italians, whose<a class="pagenum" name="Page_85" id="Page_85" title="85"> </a> bodies are built on boars and pigs, feel offended
-at the proud abstinence of the Jews, who persist in casting aside as
-unclean victuals the fat sounders, beloved of old Cato, which furnish
-food to the masters of the Universe.”</p>
-
-<p>Thus discoursing pleasantly, and enjoying the kindly shade, the four
-friends reached the furthermost end of the portico, when of a sudden
-the Forum appeared before them in a glitter of light.</p>
-
-<p>At that early hour, it was all astir with the coming and going of
-noisy crowds. In the centre of the square stood a bronze Minerva on a
-pedestal on which were sculptured the Muses, and to the right and to
-the left stood a Mercury and a bronze Apollo, the work of Hermogenes of
-Cythera. A Neptune with a green beard arose from the centre of a basin.
-At the feet of the god, a dolphin vomited forth water.</p>
-
-<p>The Forum was surrounded in all directions by monuments, the
-high columns and the arches of which revealed the Roman style of
-architecture. Facing the portico by way of which Mela and his friends
-had come, the Propylæ, surmounted by two gilded chariots, formed the
-boundary of the public square, and led, by way of marble steps, to the
-broad and straight road of the harbour of Lechæum. On either side of
-these heroic gates rose in kingly fashion the painted pediments of the
-sanctuaries, the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_86" id="Page_86" title="86"> </a> Pantheon, and the temple of Artemis of Ephesus. The
-temple of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, dominated the Forum, and
-looked upon the sea.</p>
-
-<p>Between it and the basilica ran an insignificant little street. The
-building rose over two stories of arcades supported by pillars flanked
-with Doric half-columns forming a square. The Roman style, which
-stamped its character upon all the other buildings of the city, was
-patent. There remained of the pristine Corinth nothing but the calcined
-ruins of an old temple.</p>
-
-<p>The lower arcades of the basilica were open and served as shops
-to sellers of fruit, vegetables, oil, wine and fried foods, to
-bird-fanciers, jewellers, booksellers, and barbers. Money-changers sat
-at little tables laden with gold and silver coins. From the gloomy
-hollow of these stalls emerged shouts, laughter, hailings, the noise
-of disputes, and pungent odours. On the marble steps, wherever their
-slabs were tinted blue by the shade, loafers shook dice or tossed
-knuckle-bones, suitors paced to and fro with anxious mien, sailors
-gravely looked for the pleasures upon which they should squander
-their wages, while quidnuncs read news from Rome written for them
-by frivolous Greeks. Blended with this crowd of Corinthians and
-foreigners, numerous blind beggars persistently obtruded themselves, as
-well as callow and rouged youths, matchsellers and crippled sailors<a class="pagenum" name="Page_87" id="Page_87" title="87"> </a>
-from whose necks depended a picture of the wreck of their ships. Doves
-flew in flocks from the roof of the basilica down to the large open
-spaces on which the sun shone, and picked up grain between the cracks
-of the heated flagstones.</p>
-
-<p>A girl of twelve, dark and velvety as a pansy of Xanthus, placed on
-the ground her little brother, as yet unable to walk, put beside him a
-chipped bowl filled with porridge and a wooden spoon, saying to him:</p>
-
-<p>“Eat, Comatas, eat and keep quiet, or that red horse will have you.”</p>
-
-<p>Then, holding an obolus in her hand, she ran towards the fish-dealer,
-whose wrinkled face and naked breast, the colour of saffron, appeared
-amid baskets lined with seaweed.</p>
-
-<p>While she was thus engaged, a dove hovering about the little Comatas
-got its talons entangled in the child’s locks. The boy began to cry,
-and to call his sister to his help, screaming in a voice choked with
-sobs:</p>
-
-<p>“Joessa! Joessa!”</p>
-
-<p>But Joessa heard him not. She was rummaging in the old man’s baskets,
-amid the fish and the shell-fish, for something that would improve the
-taste of her stale bread. Naturally she did not pick out a peacock-fish
-or a smaris, whose flesh is most delicate, but which cost money. She
-brought<a class="pagenum" name="Page_88" id="Page_88" title="88"> </a> away in the hollow of her gown, which she had tucked up, three
-handfuls of sea-urchins and sticklebacks.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile little Comatas, his mouth wide open, and drinking his own
-tears, was still bawling:</p>
-
-<p>“Joessa! Joessa!”</p>
-
-<p>Unlike Jove’s eagle, the bird of Venus did not carry off little Comatas
-into the glorious skies. It left him on the earth, taking with it in
-its flight, between its pink talons, three golden hairs from his matted
-locks.</p>
-
-<p>The child, with cheeks glistening with tears and begrimed with dust,
-clenching his wooden spoon in his tiny fists, was sobbing beside his
-overturned bowl.</p>
-
-<p>Annæus Mela, followed by his three friends, had reached the top of the
-basilica’s steps. Alike heedless of the noise and stir of the idle
-multitude, he was imparting information to Cassius in regard to the
-future renovation of the universe.</p>
-
-<p>“On a day determined by the gods,” he said, “the things existing
-to-day, whose order and disposition claim our attention, will be
-destroyed. Stars will clash with stars, all matters composing the
-earth, the air, and the waters will be consumed in one conflagration.
-Human souls, imperceptible <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">débris</i> amid the universal destruction,
-will be resolved anew into their primitive elements. An entirely new
-world....”</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_89" id="Page_89" title="89"> </a>
-As he uttered the words, Annæus Mela stumbled against a sleeper
-stretched out in the shade. It was an old man who had artistically
-gathered about his dust-covered body the ragged remnants of his cloak.
-His wallet, his sandals, and his stick lay beside him.</p>
-
-<p>The proconsul’s brother, ever courteous and kindly, even to men of the
-lowliest class, was about to apologise, but the recumbent individual
-did not allow him time to do so.</p>
-
-<p>“Try and see where you put your feet, you brute,” he exclaimed, “and
-give alms to the philosopher Posocharis.”</p>
-
-<p>“I perceive a wallet and a stick,” smilingly replied the Roman, “but so
-far I do not see any philosopher.”</p>
-
-<p>Just as he was about to toss a piece of silver to Posocharis,
-Apollodorus stayed his hand, saying:</p>
-
-<p>“Do not give him anything, Annæus. It is not a philosopher; nay, not
-even a man.”</p>
-
-<p>“But I am one,” replied Mela, “if I give him money, and he is a man if
-he takes this coin. For, alone among all animals, man does both these
-things. And can you not see that for the sake of a small coin I satisfy
-myself that I am a better man than he? Your master teaches that he who
-gives is better than he who receives.”</p>
-
-<p>Posocharis took the coin. Then he hurled coarse invectives at Annæus
-Mela and his companions,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_90" id="Page_90" title="90"> </a> stigmatising them as arrogant and as
-debauchees, and referring them to the jugglers and harlots who walked
-past them with undulating hips. Then, baring to the navel his hairy
-body, and drawing over his face his tattered cloak, he once more
-stretched himself out at full length on the pavement.</p>
-
-<p>“Would it not interest you,” asked Lollius of his companions, “to hear
-those Jews expound their dispute in the prætorium?”</p>
-
-<p>They replied that they entertained no such curiosity, preferring to
-stroll under the portico, while waiting for the proconsul, who would
-doubtless not be long in coming out.</p>
-
-<p>“I am with you, my friends,” said Lollius. “We shall not miss anything
-very interesting.”</p>
-
-<p>“Moreover,” he went on to say, “the Jews who have come from Cenchreæ to
-accompany the suitors are not all in the basilica. Here comes one who
-is recognisable by his beaked nose and his forked beard. He is in as
-fine a state of frenzy as Pythia herself.”</p>
-
-<p>Lollius was pointing with both look and finger at a lean stranger,
-poorly clad, who was vociferating under the portico, in the midst of a
-railing mob.</p>
-
-<p>“Men of Corinth, you place a vain trust in your wisdom, which is naught
-but madness. You follow blindly the precepts of your philosophers who
-teach you death, and not life. You do not observe the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_91" id="Page_91" title="91"> </a> natural law, and
-in order to punish you, God has delivered you unto unnatural vices....”</p>
-
-<p>A sailor, who had just joined the group of spectators, recognised the
-man, for, with a shrug of the shoulders, he muttered:</p>
-
-<p>“Why, ’tis Stephanas, the Jew of Cenchreæ, who brings once more some
-extraordinary piece of news from his trip to the skies, into which he
-ascended, if we are to credit him.”</p>
-
-<p>And Stephanas was teaching the people.</p>
-
-<p>“The Christian is not bound by law and concupiscence. He is exempt from
-damnation through the mercy of God, who sent his only son to assume a
-sinful body, in order to destroy sin. But ye shall only be delivered
-if, breaking with the flesh, you live according to the spirit.</p>
-
-<p>“The Jews observe the laws, and believe that they are saved by their
-works. But it is their faith which saves them, and not their works. Of
-what use is it to them to be circumcised in fact, if their heart is
-uncircumcised?</p>
-
-<p>“Men of Corinth, glory in the faith, and ye shall be incorporated into
-the family of Abraham.”</p>
-
-<p>The mob was beginning to laugh and jeer at these obscure utterances.
-Still the Jew continued prophesying in hollow tones. He was announcing
-a great manifestation of wrath and the all-destroying fire which was to
-consume the earth.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_92" id="Page_92" title="92"> </a>
-“And these things shall come to pass in my lifetime,” he cried, “and
-I shall witness them with mine own eyes. The hour has come for us to
-awaken from our sleep. The night has passed, and the day is dawning.
-The Saints will rejoice in Heaven, and those who have not believed in
-Jesus crucified shall perish.”</p>
-
-<p>Then, promising the resurrection of the body, he invoked Anastasis,
-amid the jeers of the hilarious crowd.</p>
-
-<p>Just then, a leather-lunged man, Milo the baker, a member of the
-Corinthian Senate, who for some time past had been listening to the Jew
-with impatience, came up to him, took him by the arm, and shaking him
-roughly said:</p>
-
-<p>“Cease, you wretch, spouting idle words. All this is children’s fables
-and nonsense fit to capture a woman’s mind. How canst thou, on the
-strength of thy dreams, indulge in such foolery, casting aside all
-that is beautiful, and taking pleasure in what is evil only, without
-even deriving any advantage from thy hatred? Renounce your strange
-phantasies, your perverse designs, your gloomy forebodings, lest a god
-abandon you to the crows, to punish you for your imprecations against
-this city and the Empire.”</p>
-
-<p>The citizens applauded Milo’s speech.</p>
-
-<p>“He speaks truly,” they shouted. “Those<a class="pagenum" name="Page_93" id="Page_93" title="93"> </a> Syrians have but one design:
-they seek to weaken our fatherland. They are the enemies of Cæsar.”</p>
-
-<p>A number of them abstracted from the fruiterers’ stalls gourds and
-locust-beans, others picked up oyster-shells, and flung them at the
-apostle, who was still vaticinating.</p>
-
-<p>Thrown down the steps of the portico, he wended his way through the
-Forum, shouting, amid a storm of hooting, insults, and blows, pelted
-with dirt, bleeding, and half naked:</p>
-
-<p>“My Master has said it, we are the sweepings of the world.”</p>
-
-<p>And he exulted in his joy.</p>
-
-<p>The children pursued him on the Cenchreæ road, yelling.</p>
-
-<p>“Anastasis! Anastasis!”</p>
-
-<p>Posocharis was not sleeping. Hardly had the friends of the proconsul
-gone away, when he raised himself upon his elbow. Seated on a step,
-a short distance from him, the swarthy Joessa was crunching between
-her teeth the shell of a sea-urchin. The cynic hailed her and showed
-her the glittering piece of silver he had just received. Then, having
-readjusted his rags and tatters, he rose, slipped his feet into his
-sandals, picked up his stick and wallet, and went down the steps.
-Joessa went up to him, relieved him of his wallet full of holes, which
-she gravely placed on her shoulder, as if to carry it as an<a class="pagenum" name="Page_94" id="Page_94" title="94"> </a> offering
-to the august Cypris, and followed the old man.</p>
-
-<p>Apollodorus saw them taking the Cenchreæ road with the object of
-reaching the cemetery of the slaves, and the place of execution
-conspicuous from afar by the swarms of crows which hovered over the
-crosses. The philosopher and the young girl knew there a clump of
-arbutus always deserted, and favourable to dalliance with Eros.</p>
-
-<p>At the sight of this, Apollodorus, pulling Mela by the flap of his
-toga, remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“Just look. No sooner has that cur received your alms than he decoys a
-child, in order to mate with her.”</p>
-
-<p>“Which goes to prove,” answered Mela, “that I gave money to the kind of
-man who knows full well what to do with it.”</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile, the brat Comatas, squatting on the heated flagstone and
-sucking his thumbs, was laughing at the sight of a pebble glistening in
-the sun.</p>
-
-<p>“Besides,” resumed Mela, “you must admit, Apollodorus, that the way
-in which Posocharis makes love is not a bit philosophical. The dog is
-assuredly wiser than our young debauchees of the Palatine, who love
-amid perfumes, tears, and laughter, with languor or with passion...”</p>
-
-<p>As he spoke, a hoarse clamour arose in the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_95" id="Page_95" title="95"> </a> prætorium, deafening to the
-ears of the Greek and the three Romans.</p>
-
-<p>“By Pollux!” exclaimed Lollius, “the suitors whose case our friend
-Gallio is trying are shouting like dockers, and it seems to me that
-together with their growls a stench of sweat and onions reaches us.”</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing is more true,” quoth Apollodorus. “But, were Posocharis a
-philosopher instead of the dog he is, far from sacrificing to the Venus
-of the cross-roads, he would flee from the whole breed of women, and
-attach himself solely to some youth, whose eternal comeliness he would
-contemplate merely as the expression of an inner beauty more noble and
-more precious.”</p>
-
-<p>“Love,” resumed Mela, “is an abject passion. It disturbs the reason,
-destroys noble impulses, and diverts the most elevated ideas to the
-vilest cares. It has no place in a sensible mind. As the poet Euripides
-teaches us....”</p>
-
-<p>Mela did not finish his sentence. Preceded by lictors, who pushed the
-crowd aside, the proconsul came out of the basilica, and went up to his
-friends.</p>
-
-<p>“I have not been away from you long,” he said. “The case which I was
-summoned to try was as meagre as could be, and ridiculous in the
-extreme. On entering the prætorium, I found it invaded by a motley
-crowd of the Jews who, in their sordid shops along the wharves of the
-harbour of Cenchreæ, sell<a class="pagenum" name="Page_96" id="Page_96" title="96"> </a> carpets, stuffs, and petty articles of
-silver and gold jewellery to the sailors. The atmosphere was filled
-with their shrill yelping, and with a pungent odour of goat. It was
-with difficulty that I could grasp the meaning of their words, and it
-cost me an effort to understand that one of those Jews, Sosthenes by
-name, who styled himself the chief of the synagogue, was charging with
-impiety another Jew, the latter, repulsively ugly, bandy-legged, and
-blear-eyed, and named Paul or Saul, a native of Tarsus, who has for
-some time past been exercising in Corinth his trade of weaver, and has
-gone into partnership with certain Jews expelled from Rome, for the
-weaving of tent-cloths and Cilician garments in goat-hair. They all
-spoke at once, and in very bad Greek. I made out, however, that this
-Sosthenes imputed as a crime to this Paul that he had entered the house
-wherein the Jews of Corinth are in the habit of meeting every Saturday,
-and had spoken with the object of seducing his co-religionists, and of
-persuading them to worship their god in a fashion contrary to their
-law. I had heard enough. So having, not without difficulty, silenced
-them, I informed them that had they come to me to complain of some
-matter of wrong or of some deed of violence wherefrom they might have
-suffered injury, I should have listened to them with patience, and
-with all the necessary attention; but, since their case turned simply
-upon<a class="pagenum" name="Page_97" id="Page_97" title="97"> </a> a question of words, and a disagreement in regard to their law,
-it concerned me not, and that I could not be judge of such matters. I
-thereupon dismissed them with these words: ‘Settle your quarrels among
-yourselves, as best you see fit.’”</p>
-
-<p>“What did they say to that?” asked Cassius. “Did they submit with good
-grace to so wise a decision?”</p>
-
-<p>“It is not in the nature of brutes,” replied the proconsul, “to relish
-wisdom. Those fellows greeted my decision with harsh murmurings of
-which, as you may well imagine, I took no notice. I left them shouting
-and struggling at the foot of the tribunal. From what I could see,
-most of the blows fell to the plaintiff. He will be left for dead, if
-my lictors do not interfere. These Jews from the harbour are great
-ignoramuses, and like most ignorant people, not enjoying the faculty of
-supporting with arguments the truth of what they believe, they know no
-other argument than kicks and fisticuffs.</p>
-
-<p>“The friends of that little deformed and blear-eyed Jew named Paul seem
-to be particularly clever at that kind of controversy. Ye gods! How
-they got the better of the chief of the synagogue, raining blows on
-him, and trampling him under their feet! But I do not doubt that had
-the friends of Sosthenes been the stronger of the two parties, they
-would have treated Paul as the friends of Paul treated Sosthenes.”</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_98" id="Page_98" title="98"> </a>
-Mela congratulated the proconsul.</p>
-
-<p>“You were right, brother mine, in sending those wretched litigants
-about their business.”</p>
-
-<p>“Could I do otherwise?” replied Gallio. “How could I have decided
-between that Sosthenes and that Paul who are the one as stupid and
-as rabid as the other?... If I treat them with contempt, do not, my
-friends, think that is because they are poor and humble, because
-Sosthenes reeks of salted fish, or for the reason that Paul’s fingers
-have become worn in weaving carpets and tent-cloth. No, Philemon and
-Baucis were poor, yet worthy of the highest honours. The gods did not
-disdain being entertained at their frugal board. Wisdom raises a slave
-above his master. Nay, a virtuous slave is superior to the gods. If
-he is their equal in wisdom, he surpasses them in the beauty of the
-accomplishment. Those Jews are to be despised simply because they are
-boorish, and that no image of the divinity is reflected in them.”</p>
-
-<p>A smile overspread the countenance of Marcus Lollius at these word.</p>
-
-<p>“Truly, the gods,” he said, “would hardly frequent the Syrians who
-infest the harbours, amid the sellers of fruit and the strumpets.”</p>
-
-<p>“The Barbarians themselves,” resumed the proconsul, “possess some
-knowledge of the gods. Not to mention the Egyptians, who, in the olden
-days,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_99" id="Page_99" title="99"> </a> were men filled with piety, there is not in wealthy Asia a
-nation which has not worshipped Diana, Vulcan, Juno, or the mother of
-the Æneædes. They give these divinities strange names, confused forms,
-and sometimes offer up to them human sacrifices, but they recognise
-their power. Alone are the Jews ignorant of the providence of the gods.
-I know not whether that Paul, whom the Syrians also call Saul, is as
-superstitious as the others, and as obstinate in his errors. I know
-not what obscure idea he conceives of the immortal gods, and to tell
-the truth, I am not concerned to know it. What is there to be learned
-of those who know nothing! It amounts, to put it plainly, to educating
-oneself in ignorance. I gathered from some of his confused expressions
-in my presence and in reply to his accuser, that he joins issue with
-the priests of his nation, that he repudiates the religion of the
-Jews, and that he worships Orpheus under an assumed name which has
-escaped me. What makes me suppose this, is that he speaks with respect
-of a god, or rather of a hero, who is supposed to have descended into
-Hades, and to have reascended into the heavens, after having wandered
-among the pallid shades of the dead. He may perhaps have set himself
-to worship some subterranean Mercury. I should, however, feel more
-inclined to believe that he worships Adonis, for I think I heard him
-say that,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_100" id="Page_100" title="100"> </a> following in the steps of the women of Byblos, he wept over
-the sufferings and the death of a god.</p>
-
-<p>“These youthful gods, who die and come to life again, abound on Asiatic
-soil. The Syrian courtesans have brought several of them to Rome, and
-these celestial youths please, more than is proper, our respectable
-women. Our matrons do not blush to celebrate their mysterious rites in
-private. My Julia, so prudent and so self-contained, has repeatedly
-asked me how much should be believed of them. ‘What kind of a god,’
-have I answered her with indignation, ‘what can be the god who takes
-delight in the stealthy homage of a married dame? A woman should know
-no other friends than those of her husband. And do not the gods stand
-first in order among our friends?’”</p>
-
-<p>“Does not this man of Tarsus,” inquired the philosopher Apollodorus,
-“pay reverence rather to Typhon, whom the Egyptians call Sethon? It
-is said that a god with an ass’s head is shown honour by a certain
-Jewish sect. This god can be no other than Typhon, and I should not be
-surprised if the weavers of Cenchreæ held a secret intercourse with the
-Immortal, who, according to our gentle Marcus, committed so disgusting
-an outrage on the old woman who sold cakes.”</p>
-
-<p>“I know not,” resumed Gallio. “They do indeed say that a number of
-Syrians meet to celebrate<a class="pagenum" name="Page_101" id="Page_101" title="101"> </a> in secret the worship of a god with a
-donkey’s head. It may be that Paul is one of them. But what matters
-the Adonis, the Mercury, the Orpheus, or the Typhon of that Jew? He
-will never reign over any but the female fortune-tellers, the usurers,
-and the sordid traders who spoil the sailors in seaports. At the very
-utmost will he be able to win over, in the suburbs of the big cities, a
-few handfuls of slaves.”</p>
-
-<p>“Oho! Oho!” exclaimed Marcus Lollius in an outburst of laughter, “can
-you see that hideous Paul founding a religion of slaves? By Castor,
-it would indeed be a miraculous novelty! Should perchance the god of
-the slaves (may Jove avert the omen!) climb up into Olympus and expel
-therefrom the gods of the empire, what would he do in turn? In what way
-would he exercise his power over the astonished world? I should enjoy
-seeing him at work. He would no doubt keep up the Saturnalia during the
-entire course of the year. He would open to gladiators the road to the
-highest honours, establish the prostitutes of the Suburra in the temple
-of Vesta, and perhaps make of some wretched straggling village in Syria
-the capital of the world.”</p>
-
-<p>Lollius might have followed up his jest for some time had Gallio not
-interrupted him.</p>
-
-<p>“Marcus,” he said, “do not entertain the hope of witnessing these
-marvellous novelties. Although<a class="pagenum" name="Page_102" id="Page_102" title="102"> </a> men are capable of stupendous acts of
-folly, it is not a little Jew weaver who could seduce them with his bad
-Greek and his tales about a Syrian Orpheus. The slaves’ god could but
-foment uprisings and servile wars, which would be promptly put down in
-blood, and he would soon perish himself, together with his worshippers,
-in an amphitheatre, under the teeth of wild beasts, to the plaudits of
-the Roman people.</p>
-
-<p>“Enough of Paul and Sosthenes. Their mind would not be of any help to
-us in the quest we were engaged upon ere they so untowardly interrupted
-us. We were seeking to know the future the gods have in store for us,
-not for you, dear friends, or for me in particular (for we are prepared
-to endure all that is to be), but for the fatherland and for the human
-race which we love and towards which we feel kindly. It is not that Jew
-weaver, with his inflamed eyelids, who could tell us, whatever Marcus
-may think, the name of the god who is to dethrone Jupiter.”</p>
-
-<p>Gallio broke off his speech to dismiss the lictors, who stood
-motionless in line before him, shouldering their fasces.</p>
-
-<p>“We require neither the rods nor the axes,” he remarked with a smile.
-“Speech is our only weapon. May the day come when the universe shall
-know no others. If you are not tired, my<a class="pagenum" name="Page_103" id="Page_103" title="103"> </a> friends, let us walk towards
-the Pirene fountain. We shall find midway an old fig-tree under which,
-so it is related, the betrayed Medea meditated her cruel revenge. The
-Corinthians hold the tree in reverence, in memory of that jealous
-queen, and suspend votive tablets from its branches, for Medea never
-brought them but good. It has cleft the earth with its branches,
-which have thrown out roots, and it is still crowned with a luxuriant
-foliage. Seated in its shade, we can while away time with conversation
-till our bath-hour.”</p>
-
-<p>The children, weary of pursuing Stephanas, were playing at
-knuckle-bones by the roadside. The apostle was striding along rapidly,
-when he came across, near the place of execution, a band of Jews, who
-had come up from Cenchreæ to ascertain the judgment rendered by the
-proconsul in regard to the synagogue. They were friends of Sosthenes,
-and were greatly irritated against the Jew of Tarsus and his adherents
-because they sought to change the law. Noticing the man, who was
-wiping with his sleeve his eyes blinded with blood, they thought they
-recognised him, and one of them, pulling him by the beard, asked him if
-he were not Stephanas, the companion of Paul.</p>
-
-<p>Proudly he answered:</p>
-
-<p>“Behold him!”</p>
-
-<p>He was quickly thrown to the ground, and trampled<a class="pagenum" name="Page_104" id="Page_104" title="104"> </a> under foot. The Jews
-were picking up stones and shouting:</p>
-
-<p>“He is a blasphemer! Stone him!”</p>
-
-<p>A couple of the most zealous tore up the milestone sunk by the Romans,
-and were endeavouring to heave it at him. The stones fell with a dull
-thud on the skinny bones of the apostle, who yelled:</p>
-
-<p>“Oh the delight of these wounds! Oh the joy of these sufferings! Oh the
-refreshment of this torture! I behold Jesus.”</p>
-
-<p>A few steps farther off, under an arbutus, and to the murmurings of a
-spring, old Posocharis was pressing in his arms the smooth flanks of
-Joessa. Annoyed at the disturbance, he growled with a choking voice,
-with head buried in the hair of the young girl:</p>
-
-<p>“Begone, you low brutes, and do not trouble a philosopher’s pastime.”</p>
-
-<p>After a few minutes, a centurion who was passing along the now deserted
-road, raised Stephanas from the ground, made him swallow a mouthful of
-wine, and gave him linen wherewith to bandage his wounds.</p>
-
-<p>While this was going on, Gallio, sitting with his friends under Medea’s
-tree, was saying:</p>
-
-<p>“If you wish to know the successor of the master of gods and men,
-meditate the words of the poet:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_105" id="Page_105" title="105"> </a>
-“‘Jove’s spouse shall bring forth a son more powerful than his
-father.’</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>“This line designates, not the august Juno, but the most illustrious
-among the noble women with whom consorted the Olympian who so often
-changed his form and his loves. It seems to me assured that the
-government of the universe is to fall to the lot of Hercules. This
-opinion has long since taken root in my mind, by reasons derived not
-only from the poets, but from philosophers and men of science. I have,
-so to speak, greeted by anticipation the accession of the son of
-Alcmene, in the climax of my tragedy of <em>Hercules on Œta</em>, ending with
-the following words:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>“‘Hail, great conqueror of monsters, and pacifier of the world;
-be propitious unto us! Cast thy gaze upon the earth, and if
-some monster of a new kind strike terror into mankind, destroy
-it with a thunderbolt. Better than thy father wilt thou know
-how to hurl thunder.’</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>“I augur favourably of the coming reign of Hercules. During his life
-upon earth, he displayed a spirit patient and inclined to elevated
-thoughts. When the time comes for thunder to arm his hand, he will not
-suffer a new Caius to govern the Empire<a class="pagenum" name="Page_106" id="Page_106" title="106"> </a> with impunity. Virtue, ancient
-simplicity, courage, innocence, and peace will reign with him. Thus do
-I prophesy.”</p>
-
-<p>And Gallio, having risen, took leave of his friends with these words:</p>
-
-<p>“Fare ye well, and love me.”</p>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_107" id="Page_107" title="107"> </a></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<h2><a name="iii" id="iii"></a>III</h2>
-
-
-<div class="width80">
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-a_drop.jpg" width="80" height="90" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">As</span> Nicole Langelier came to the end of his reading, the birds heralded
-by Giacomo Boni filled the deserted Forum with their friendly cries.</p>
-
-<p>The sky was spreading over the Roman ruins the ash-tinted veil of
-evening; the young laurel-bushes planted along the Via Sacra lifted up
-into the diaphanous atmosphere their branches black as antique bronzes,
-while the flanks of the Palatine were clothed in azure.</p>
-
-<p>“Langelier,” spoke M. Goubin, who was not easily deceived, “you did
-not invent that story. The suit brought by Sosthenes against St. Paul
-before Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, is to be found in the <em>Acts of the
-Apostles</em>.”</p>
-
-<p>Nichole Langelier readily admitted the fact.</p>
-
-<p>“The story is told,” he said, “in chapter xviii., and occupies verses
-12 to 17 inclusively, which I am able to read to you, for I copied them
-on to a sheet of my manuscript.”</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_108" id="Page_108" title="108"> </a>
-Whereupon he read:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>“‘12. And when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made
-insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to
-the judgment seat,</p>
-
-<p>“‘13. Saying, This <em>fellow</em> persuadeth men to worship God
-contrary to the law.</p>
-
-<p>“‘14. And when Paul was now about to open <em>his</em> mouth, Gallio
-said unto the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked
-lewdness, O <em>ye</em> Jews, reason would that I should bear with you:</p>
-
-<p>“‘15. But if it be a question of words and names, and <em>of</em> your
-law, look ye <em>to it</em>; for I will be no judge of such <em>matters</em>.</p>
-
-<p>“‘16. And he drove them from the judgment seat.</p>
-
-<p>“‘17. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of
-the synagogue, and beat <em>him</em> before the judgment seat. And
-Gallio cared for none of those things.’</p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>“I have not invented anything,” added Langelier. “Little is known of
-Annæus Mela, and of Gallio, his brother. It is, however, certain that
-they were numbered among the most intelligent men of their day. When
-Achaia, a senatorial province under Augustus, an imperial one under
-Tiberius, was<a class="pagenum" name="Page_109" id="Page_109" title="109"> </a> restored to the Senate by Claudius, Gallio was sent
-thither as proconsul. He was doubtless indebted for the post to the
-influence of his brother Seneca; it is possible, however, that he was
-selected for his knowledge of Greek literature, and as a man agreeable
-to the Athenian professors, whose intellects the Romans admired. He
-was highly educated. He had written a book on physiological subjects,
-and, it is believed, some few tragedies. His works are all lost, unless
-something from his pen is to be met with in the collection of tragic
-recitations attributed without sufficient reasons to his brother the
-philosopher. I have assumed that he was a Stoic, and that he held in
-many respects the same opinions as his illustrious brother. But, while
-placing in his mouth words of virtue and rectitude, I have guarded
-against attributing any settled doctrine to him. The Romans of those
-days blended the ideas of Epicurus with those of Zenon. I was not
-incurring any great risk of being mistaken, when investing Gallio with
-this eclecticism. I have represented him as a kindly man. He was that,
-assuredly. Seneca has said of him that no one loved him in a lukewarm
-fashion. His gentleness was universal. He aspired to honours.</p>
-
-<p>“Quite the contrary, his brother Annæus Mela held aloof from them. We
-have on that point the testimony of Seneca the philosopher, as well as
-that<a class="pagenum" name="Page_110" id="Page_110" title="110"> </a> of Tacitus. When Helvia, the mother of the three Senecas, lost
-her husband, the most famed of her sons indited a small philosophical
-treatise for her. In a certain part of this work, he exhorts her to
-consider, in order to reconcile her to life, that there remain unto
-her sons like Gallio and Mela, differing as to character, but equally
-worthy of her affection.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Cast thine eyes upon my brothers,’ he says, or words to that effect.
-‘Both shall, by the diversity of their virtues, charm thy weary
-moments. Gallio has attained honours through his talents. Mela has
-despised them in his wisdom. Derive enjoyment from the regard in which
-the one is held, from the calm of the other, and from the love of both.
-I know the inner sentiments of my brothers. Gallio seeks in dignities
-an ornament for thyself. Mela embraces a gentle and peaceful life in
-order to devote himself to thee.’</p>
-
-<p>“A child during the principality of Nero, Tacitus did not know the
-Senecas. He merely collected what was currently said about them in his
-day. He states that if Mela held aloof from honours, it was through
-a refinement of ambition, and, a simple Roman knight, to rival the
-influence of the consular officers. After having administered in person
-the vast estates he possessed in Boetica, Mela came to Rome, and had
-himself appointed administrator of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_111" id="Page_111" title="111"> </a> Nero’s estate. The conclusion was
-drawn therefrom that he was shrewd in matters of business, and he was
-even suspected of not being as disinterested as he wished to appear.
-That may be. The Senecas, while parading their contempt for riches,
-were possessed of great wealth, and it is very hard to believe the
-tutor of Nero when, amid the luxury of his furniture and his gardens,
-he represents himself as faithful to his beloved poverty. Still, the
-three sons of Helvia were not ordinary souls. Mela had of Atilla,
-his wife, a son, Lucan the poet. It would seem that Lucan’s talent
-reflected great lustre on his father’s name. Letters were then held in
-high honour, and eloquence and poetry ranked above all things.</p>
-
-<p>“Seneca, Mela, Lucan, and Gallio perished with the accomplices of
-Piso. Seneca the philosopher was already an aged man. Tacitus, who
-had not been a witness of his death, has portrayed the scene for us.
-We know how Nero’s tutor opened his veins while in his bath, and how
-his young wife Paulina protested that she would die with him, and by a
-<a name="similar" id="similar"></a><ins title="Original has similiar">similar</ins> death. By Nero’s order, Paulina’s wrists, which
-had been opened at the veins, were bandaged. She lived, preserving
-thereafter a deathly pallor. Tacitus records that young Lucan, whilst
-under torture, denounced his mother. Even if there were confirmation of
-this infamous deed, the blame for it<a class="pagenum" name="Page_112" id="Page_112" title="112"> </a> should be laid to the tortures
-he underwent. But there is certainly one reason for not believing
-it. If indeed pain extorted from Lucan the names of several of the
-conspirators, he did not pronounce that of Atilla, since Atilla was not
-molested at a time when every information was blindly credited.</p>
-
-<p>“After the death of Lucan, Mela, with too great a haste and diligence,
-seized on the inheritance of his son. A friend of the young poet, who
-doubtless coveted the inheritance, became the accuser of Mela. It was
-alleged that the father had been initiated into the secret of the
-conspiracy, and a forged letter of Lucan was brought forth. Nero, after
-having read it, ordered it to be shown to Mela. Following the example
-set by his brother and so many of Nero’s victims, Mela caused his veins
-to be opened, after having bequeathed a large sum of money to the
-freedmen of Cæsar, in order to secure the remainder of his fortunes to
-the unhappy Atilla. Gallio did not survive his two brothers; he took
-his own life.</p>
-
-<p>“Such was the tragic end of these charming and cultured men. I have
-made two of them, Gallio and Mela, speak in Corinth. Mela was a great
-traveller. His son Lucan, while yet a child, was on a visit to Athens,
-at the time Gallio was proconsul of Achaia. There is therefore some
-show of reason for saying that Mela was then with his brother in
-Corinth. I<a class="pagenum" name="Page_113" id="Page_113" title="113"> </a> have supposed that two young Romans of illustrious birth,
-and a philosopher of the Areopagus, accompanied the proconsul. In so
-doing, I have not taken too great a liberty, since the intendants, the
-procurators, the proprætors, and the proconsuls whom the Emperor and
-the Senate respectively sent to govern the provinces, always had about
-themselves the sons of great families, who came to instruct themselves
-in the management of public affairs under their guidance, and that of
-men of keen intellect like my Apollodorus, more frequently freedmen
-acting as their secretaries. Lastly, I conceived the idea that at
-the moment St. Paul was being brought before a Roman tribunal, the
-proconsul and his friends were conversing freely about the most varied
-subjects, art, philosophy, religion, and politics, and that there
-pierced the various topics absorbing their interest a deep anxiety as
-to the future. There is indeed some likelihood that on that very day,
-just as well as on any other, they may have sought to discover the
-future destiny of Rome and the world. Gallio and Mela stood among the
-most elevated and open intellects of the day. Minds of such a calibre
-are at all times inclined to delve into the present and the past for
-the conditions of the future. I have noticed in the most learned and
-well-informed men whom I have known, to name but Renan and Berthelot,
-a pronounced tendency to interject at haphazard into<a class="pagenum" name="Page_114" id="Page_114" title="114"> </a> a conversation
-outlines of rational utopias and scientific forecasts.”</p>
-
-<p>“Here then we have,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “one of the best educated
-men of his day, a man versed in philosophic speculation, trained in
-the conduct of public affairs, and who was of as open and broad a mind
-as could be that of a Roman such as Gallio, the brother of Seneca, the
-ornament and light of his century. He is concerned about the future,
-he seeks to grasp the movement which is most affecting the world, and
-he tries to fathom the destiny of the Empire and the gods. Just then,
-by a unique stroke of fortune, he comes across St. Paul; the future
-he is in quest of passes by him, and he sees it not. What an example
-of the blindness which strikes, in the very presence of an unexpected
-revelation, the most enlightened minds and the keenest intellects!”</p>
-
-<p>“I would have you observe, my dear friend,” replied Nicole Langelier,
-“that it was not a very easy matter for Gallio to converse with St.
-Paul. It is not easy to conceive how they could possibly have exchanged
-ideas. St. Paul had trouble in expressing himself, and it was with
-great difficulty that he made himself intelligible to the folk who
-lived and thought like himself. He had never spoken word of mouth to
-any cultured man.</p>
-
-<p>“He was nowise capable of indicating a train of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_115" id="Page_115" title="115"> </a> thought and of
-following those of an interlocutor. He was ignorant of Greek science.
-Gallio, accustomed to the conversation of educated people, had long
-since trained his reason to debate. He knew not the maxims of the
-rabbis. What then could these two men have said to each other?</p>
-
-<p>“Not that it was impossible for a Jew to converse with a Roman. The
-Herods enjoyed a mode of expression which was agreeable to Tiberius
-and Caligula. Flavius Josephus and Queen Berenice discoursed in terms
-pleasing to Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem. We know that bejewelled
-Jews were at all times to be found in company of the antisemites. They
-were <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">meschoumets</i> (accursed unbelievers&mdash;anathema to Paul). Paul was
-a <em>nĕbi</em> (prophet). This fiery and haughty Syrian, disdainful of the
-worldly goods sought for by all men, thirsting after poverty, ambitious
-of insults and humiliations, rejoicing in suffering, was merely able to
-proclaim his sombre and inflamed visions, his hatred of life and of the
-beautiful, his absurd outbursts of anger, and his insane charity. Apart
-from this, he had nothing to say. In truth, I can discover one subject
-only on which he might have agreed with the proconsul of Achaia. ’Tis
-Nero.</p>
-
-<p>“St. Paul, at that time, could hardly have heard any mention of the
-youthful son of Agrippina, but on learning that Nero was destined to
-Imperial<a class="pagenum" name="Page_116" id="Page_116" title="116"> </a> power, he would immediately become a Neronian. He became so
-later on. He was still one at the time Nero poisoned Britannicus. Not
-that he was capable of approving of a brother’s murder, but because he
-entertained a profound respect for all government. ‘Let every soul be
-subject unto the higher powers,’ he wrote to his churches. ‘For rulers
-are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not
-be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have
-praise of the same.’ Gallio might perchance have found these maxims
-somewhat simple and commonplace, but he could not have disapproved of
-them as a whole. But if there is a subject which he would not have felt
-tempted to approach while speaking with a Jewish weaver, it is indeed
-the ruling of people and the authority of the Emperor. Once more, what
-could those two men well have said to each other?</p>
-
-<p>“In our own day, when a European official in Africa, let us say the
-Governor-General of the Sudan for his Britannic Majesty, or our
-Governor of Algeria, comes across a fakeer or a marabout, their
-conversation is naturally confined within restricted limits. St. Paul
-was to a proconsul what a marabout is to our civil Governor of Algeria.
-A conversation between Gallio and St. Paul would have resembled only
-too much, I imagine, that held by<a class="pagenum" name="Page_117" id="Page_117" title="117"> </a> General Desaix with his famous
-dervish. After the battle of the Pyramids, General Desaix, at the head
-of twelve hundred cavalry, pursued into Upper Egypt the Mamelukes of
-Murad Bey. On arriving at Girgeh, he heard that an old dervish, who had
-acquired among the Arabs a wide reputation for learning and sanctity,
-was living near that city. Desaix was endowed with both philosophy and
-humanity. Desirous of making the acquaintance of a man esteemed of his
-fellows, he caused the dervish to be summoned to headquarters, received
-him with honour, and entered into conversation with him through an
-interpreter.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Venerable old man,’ he said, ‘the French have come to bring Egypt
-justice and liberty.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I knew they would come,’ replied the dervish.</p>
-
-<p>“‘How did you come to know it?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Through an eclipse of the sun.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘How can an eclipse of the sun have informed you as to the movement of
-our armies?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Eclipses are brought about by the angel Gabriel, who places himself
-before the sun in order to announce to the faithful the misfortunes
-which threaten them.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Venerable old man, you are ignorant of the true cause of eclipses; I
-shall impart the knowledge of it to you.’</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_118" id="Page_118" title="118"> </a>
-“Thereupon, taking a stump of pencil and a scrap of paper, he traced
-some figures:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Let A be the sun, B, the moon, C, the earth,’ and so forth...</p>
-
-<p>“And when he had come to the end of his demonstration,</p>
-
-<p>“‘Such,’ he said, ‘is the theory governing eclipses of the sun.’</p>
-
-<p>“And as the dervish was mumbling a few words,</p>
-
-<p>“‘What does he say?’ asked the General of the interpreter.</p>
-
-<p>“‘General, he says that it is the angel Gabriel who causes eclipses, by
-placing himself in front of the sun.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘The fellow is simply naught but a fanatic!’ exclaimed Desaix.</p>
-
-<p>“Whereupon he drove the dervish out with well-administered kicks.</p>
-
-<p>“I imagine that had a conversation been entered into between St. Paul
-and Gallio, it would have ended somewhat as did the dialogue between
-the dervish and General Desaix.”</p>
-
-<p>“It must, however, be pointed out,” said Joséphin Leclerc, joining
-issue, “that between the Apostle Paul and the dervish of General
-Desaix, there is at the very least this difference: the dervish did
-not impose his faith on Europe. And you will admit that his Britannic
-Majesty’s honourable Governor of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_119" id="Page_119" title="119"> </a> the Sudan has doubtless not come
-across the marabout who is to confer his name on the biggest church
-in London; you must likewise admit that our civil Governor of Algeria
-has never come face to face with the founder of a religion which the
-majority of the French nation will some day believe and profess. These
-functionaries have not seen the future arise before them under a human
-form. The proconsul of Achaia did.”</p>
-
-<p>“It was none the less impossible for Gallio,” replied Langelier, “to
-carry on with St. Paul a steady conversation on some important subject
-regarding morals or philosophy. I am well aware, and you yourselves
-are not ignorant of the fact, that towards the fifth century of the
-Christian Era, it was believed that Seneca had known St. Paul in
-Rome, and had expressed admiration of the Apostle’s doctrines. This
-fable owed its spread to the deplorable clouding of the human mind
-following so closely upon the age of Tacitus and of Trajan. In order
-to obtain credence for it, certain forgerers, who at that time swarmed
-in Christian ranks, fabricated a correspondence which is mentioned
-respectfully by St. Jerome and St. Augustine. If these letters are
-those which have come unto us ascribed to Paul and Seneca, it must
-be that those two Fathers did not read them, or that they greatly
-lacked discernment. It is the absurd work of a Christian utterly
-ignorant<a class="pagenum" name="Page_120" id="Page_120" title="120"> </a> of everything connected with Nero’s time, and one totally
-incapable of imitating Seneca’s style. Is it necessary to say that the
-great divines of the Middle Ages firmly believed in the truth of the
-intercourse between the two men and in the genuineness of the letters?
-But the classical scholars of the Renaissance had no difficulty in
-demonstrating the unlikelihood and the falsity of these inventions. It
-matters little that Joseph de Maistre should have garnered by the way
-this antiquated rubbish together with much of the same kind. No one any
-longer heeds it, and henceforth it is only in pretty novels written
-for society by skilful and mystical authors that the apostles of the
-primitive Church converse freely with the philosophers and people of
-fashion of Imperial Rome and expound to the delight of Petronius the
-novel beauties of Christianity. The words of Gallio and his friends,
-which you have just heard, are endowed with less charm and more truth.”</p>
-
-<p>“I do not deny it,” replied Joséphin Leclerc, “and I believe that the
-personages of the <a name="dialogue" id="dialogue"></a><ins title="Original has diologue">dialogue</ins> are made to think and speak
-as they must actually have thought and spoken, and that the ideas
-entertained by them are those of their day. Therein, it seems to me,
-lies the merit of the work, and therefore do I reason about it just as
-if I were basing my arguments on a historical text.”</p>
-
-<p>“You may safely do so,” said Langelier. “I<a class="pagenum" name="Page_121" id="Page_121" title="121"> </a> have not embodied in it
-anything for which I have not the authority of a reference.”</p>
-
-<p>“Very well then,” resumed Joséphin Leclerc, “so we have been
-listening to a Greek philosopher and several Roman literati engaged
-in speculation as to the future destinies of their fatherland, of
-humanity, and of the earth, and seeking to discover the name of Jove’s
-successor. The while they are absorbed in this perplexing quest, the
-apostle of the new god appears before them, and they treat him with
-contempt. I maintain that in so doing they plainly show a lack of
-penetration, and lose through their own fault a unique opportunity of
-becoming instructed concerning that which they felt so great a desire
-to know.”</p>
-
-<p>“It seems self-evident to you, my good friend,” replied Nicole
-Langelier, “that Gallio, had he known how to set about it, would have
-gathered from St. Paul the secret of the future. Such is perhaps the
-first idea that springs to the mind, and it is one that many have
-become imbued with. Renan, after having recorded, according to the
-<em>Acts</em>, this singular interview between Gallio and St. Paul, is not
-averse from discovering evidence of a narrow and thoughtless mind in
-the contempt experienced by the proconsul for this Jew of Tarsus who
-appeared before his tribunal. He seizes the opportunity thus offered to
-lament the poor philosophy of the Romans. ‘What<a class="pagenum" name="Page_122" id="Page_122" title="122"> </a> a lack of foresight,’
-he exclaims, ‘is sometimes exhibited by intellectual men! In later
-times, it was to be discovered that the squabble between those abject
-sectarians was the great event of the century.’ Renan seems to believe
-that the proconsul of Achaia had merely to listen to that weaver in
-order to be there and then informed of the spiritual revolution in
-course of preparation throughout the universe, and to penetrate the
-secret of future humanity. And this is also no doubt what every one
-thinks at first sight. Nevertheless, ere settling the point, let
-us look more closely into the matter; let us examine what both men
-expected, and let us find out which of the two was, when all is said
-and done, the better prophet.</p>
-
-<p>“In the first place, Gallio believed that the youthful Nero would be
-an emperor of philosophic mind, govern according to the maxims of the
-Portico, and be the delight of the human race. He was mistaken, and
-the reasons for his erroneous assumption are only too patent. His
-brother Seneca was the tutor of the son of Agrippina; his nephew, the
-boy Lucan, lived on terms of intimacy with the young prince. Both
-his family and his personal interests bound up the proconsul with
-the fortunes of Nero. He believed that Nero would make an excellent
-Emperor, for the wish was father to the thought. His mistake arose
-rather from<a class="pagenum" name="Page_123" id="Page_123" title="123"> </a> weakness of character than from lack of intellect. Nero,
-moreover, was then a youth full of gentleness, and the early years
-of his principality were not to give the lie to the hopes of the
-philosophers. Secondly, Gallio believed that peace would reign over
-the world after the chastisement of the Parthians. He erred owing to a
-lack of knowledge of the actual dimensions of the earth. He erroneously
-believed that the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">orbis Romanus</i> covered the whole of the globe; that
-the inhabitable world ended at the burning or frozen strands, rivers,
-mountains, sands, and deserts reached by the Roman eagles, and that the
-Germani and Parthians peopled the confines of the universe. We know
-how much weeping and blood this error, shared in common by all Romans,
-cost the Empire. Thirdly, Gallio, pinning his faith to the oracles,
-believed in the eternity of Rome. He was mistaken, if his prediction
-is to be taken in a narrow and literal sense. But he was not so, if
-one considers that Rome, the Rome of Cæsar and Trajan, has bequeathed
-us its customs and laws, and that modern civilisation proceeds from
-Roman civilisation. It is in the august square where we now stand that
-from the height of the rostral tribune and in the Curia was debated
-the fate of the universe, and the form of constitution which to the
-present day governs the nations. Our science is based on Greek science
-transmitted to us by Rome.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_124" id="Page_124" title="124"> </a> The reawakening of ancient thought in the
-fifteenth century in Italy, in the sixteenth century in France and
-Germany, was the cause of Europe being born anew in science and in
-reason. The proconsul of Achaia did not deceive himself: Rome is not
-defunct, since she lives in us. Let us, in the fourth place, examine
-Gallio’s philosophical ideas. No doubt he was not equipped with a very
-sound natural philosophy, and he did not always interpret natural
-phenomena with sufficient precision. He applied himself to metaphysics
-as a Roman, <abbr title="that is">i.e.</abbr>, with a lack of acuteness. At heart, he valued
-philosophy merely because of its utility, and devoted himself mainly
-to moral questions. I have neither betrayed nor flattered him when
-placing his speeches on record. I have represented him as serious and
-mediocre, and a fairly good disciple of Cicero. You may have gathered
-that he reconciled, by dint of the poorest of reasoning, the doctrine
-of the Stoics to the national religion. One feels that whenever he
-indulges in speculation as to the nature of the gods, he is anxious to
-remain a good citizen and an honest official. But, after all, he thinks
-matters out, and reasons. The idea he conceives of the forces which
-govern the world is, in its principle, rational and scientific and, in
-this respect, it conforms to that which we have ourselves conceived of
-them. He does not reason as well as his friend the Greek<a class="pagenum" name="Page_125" id="Page_125" title="125"> </a> Apollodorus.
-He does not argue any worse than the professors of our University who
-teach an independent philosophy and a Christian antimaterialism. By
-his open-mindedness and his strength of intelligence, he seems our
-contemporary. His thoughts turn naturally in the direction followed by
-the human mind at the present moment. Do not therefore let us say that
-he was unable to recognise the intellectual future of humanity.</p>
-
-<p>“As to St. Paul, he announced the future; none doubt the fact. And yet
-he expected to see with his own eyes the world come to an end, and all
-things existing engulfed in flames. This conflagration of the universe,
-which Gallio and the Stoics foresaw in a future so remote that they
-none the less announced the eternity of the Empire, Paul believed to
-be quite close at hand, and was preparing for that great day. Herein
-he was mistaken, and you will admit that this misconception is in
-itself worse than all the united blunders of Gallio and his friends.
-Still more serious is it that Paul did not base this extraordinary
-belief on any observation or any reasoning whatever. He was ignorant
-of and despised science. He gave himself up to the lowest practices of
-thaumaturgy and glossology, and had no culture whatsoever.</p>
-
-<p>“As a matter of fact, in regard to the future, as well as to the
-present and the past, there was nothing<a class="pagenum" name="Page_126" id="Page_126" title="126"> </a> the proconsul could learn
-from the apostle, nothing but a mere name. Had he learnt that Paul was
-of Christ’s religion, he would not have been any the better informed
-as to the future of Christianity, which was within a few years to
-disengage itself almost wholly from the ideas of Paul and of the first
-apostolic men. Thus it will be seen, if one does not pin one’s opinion
-to liturgical texts, and to the strictly verbal interpretations of
-theologians, that St. Paul foresaw the future less accurately than
-Gallio, and one will be inclined to think that were the apostle to
-return to Rome nowadays, he would discover more cause for surprise than
-the proconsul.</p>
-
-<p>“St. Paul, in modern Rome, would no more recognise himself on the
-column of Marcus Aurelius than he would recognise on the column of
-Trajan his old enemy Cephas. The dome of St. Peter’s, the Stanze of
-the Vatican, the splendour of the churches, and the Papal pomp, all
-would offend his blinking eyes. In vain would he look for disciples in
-London, Paris, or Geneva. He would not understand either Catholics or
-Reformers who vie in quoting his real or supposed Epistles. Nor would
-he understand the minds freed from all dogma, who base their opinion
-on the two forces he hated and despised the most: science and reason.
-On discovering that the Son of Man has not come, he would rend his
-garments, and cover himself with ashes.”</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_127" id="Page_127" title="127"> </a>
-Hippolyte Dufresne interrupted, saying:</p>
-
-<p>“Whether in Paris or in Rome, there is no doubt that St. Paul would be
-as an owl blinking in the sun. He would be no more fit than a Bedouin
-of the desert to communicate with cultured Europeans. He would not know
-himself when at a bishop’s, nor would he obtain recognition from him.
-Were he to alight at the house of a Swiss pastor fed upon his writings,
-he would astound him with the primitive crudity of his Christianity.
-All this is true. Bear in mind, however, that he was a Semite, a
-foreigner to Latin thought, to the genius of the Germani and Saxons, to
-the races from which sprung those theologians who, by dint of erroneous
-conceptions, mistranslations, and absurdities, discovered a meaning in
-his counterfeit Epistles. You conceive him in a world which was not his
-own, which can in no wise become his, and this absurd conception at
-once gives birth to an agglomeration of incongruous presentments. We
-picture to ourselves, to illustrate what I say, this vagabond weaver
-sitting in a Cardinal’s coach, and we make merry over the appearance
-presented by two human beings of so opposite a character. If you
-persist in resurrecting St. Paul, pray have the good taste to restore
-him to his race and country, among the Semites of the East, who have
-not greatly changed these twenty centuries, and for whom the Bible and
-the Talmud contain human<a class="pagenum" name="Page_128" id="Page_128" title="128"> </a> science in its entirety. Drop him among the
-Jews of Damascus or of Jerusalem. Lead him to the Synagogue. There
-he will listen without astonishment to the teachings of his master,
-Gamaliel. He will enter into disputation with the rabbis, will weave
-goat-hair, live on dates and a little rice, observe the law faithfully,
-and of a sudden undertake to destroy it. He will in turn be persecutor
-and persecuted, executioner and martyr, all with equal keenness. The
-Jews of the Synagogue will proceed with his excommunication, by blowing
-into a ram’s horn, and by spilling drop by drop the wax of black
-candles into a tub containing blood. He will endure without flinching
-this horrible ceremony, and will exercise, in the course of an arduous
-and continually menaced existence, the energy of a headstrong will. In
-such circumstances, he will probably be known to only a few ignorant
-and sordid Jews. But it will be Paul once more, and wholly Paul.”</p>
-
-<p>“That may be possible,” said Joséphin Leclerc. “Yet you will grant me
-that St. Paul was one of the principal founders of Christianity, and
-that he might have imparted to Gallio valuable information concerning
-the great religious movement of which the proconsul was entirely
-ignorant.”</p>
-
-<p>“He who founds a religion,” replied Langelier, “wots not what he
-does. I may say almost the same of those who found great human
-institutions,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_129" id="Page_129" title="129"> </a> monastic orders, insurance companies, national guards,
-banks, trusts, trade unions, academies, schools of music and the
-drama, gymnastic societies, soup-kitchens, and lectures. Generally
-speaking, these establishments do not for any length of time carry
-out the intentions of their founders, and it sometimes happens that
-they become diametrically opposed to them. It is as much as one can
-do to trace after many long years a few vestiges of their founders’
-original intention. In the matter of religions, at any rate among
-nations whose existence is troublous and whose mind is fickle, they
-undergo so incessant and so complete a transformation, according to
-the feelings or interests of their faithful and their ministers, that
-in the course of a few years they preserve naught of the spirit which
-created them. Gods undergo more changes than men, for the reason that
-their form is less precise and that they endure longer. Some there are
-who improve as they grow older; others deteriorate with the years. It
-takes less than a century for a god to become unrecognisable. The god
-of the Christians has perhaps undergone a more complete transformation
-than any other. This is doubtless attributable to the fact that he has
-belonged in succession to the most varied civilisations and races, to
-the Latins, to the Greeks, to the Barbarians, and to all the nations
-sprung from the ruins of the Roman Empire. It is assuredly a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_130" id="Page_130" title="130"> </a> far cry
-from the wooden Apollo of Dædalus to the classical Apollo Belvedere.
-Still greater a distance separates the youthful Christ of the Catacombs
-from the ascetic Christ of our cathedrals. This personage of the
-Christian mythology perplexes one by the number and variety of his
-metamorphoses. The flamboyant Christ of St. Paul is followed, as early
-as the second century, by the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels, a poor
-Jew, vaguely communistic, who becomes, with the Fourth Gospel, a sort
-of young Alexandrine, a milk-and-water disciple of the Gnostics. At
-a later period, if we only take into account the Roman Christs and
-tarry merely with the most famed of them, we have had the dominating
-Christ of Gregory VII., the bloodthirsty Christ of St. Dominic, the
-mob-leading Christ of Julius II., the atheistic and artistic Christ of
-Leo X., the indeterminate and insipid Christ of the Jesuits, Christ the
-protector of the factory, the defender of capital and the opponent of
-Socialism, who flourished under the pontificate of Leo XIII., and who
-still reigns. All those Christs, who have but the name in common, were
-not foreseen by Paul. In reality, he knew no more than Gallio about the
-future god.”</p>
-
-<p>“You exaggerate,” remarked M. Goubin, who disliked exaggeration in
-whatever form.</p>
-
-<p>Giacomo Boni, who venerates the sacred books of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_131" id="Page_131" title="131"> </a> all nations, here
-pointed out that Gallio and the Roman philosophers and historians were
-to be blamed for not having a knowledge of the Jews’ Sacred Scriptures.</p>
-
-<p>“Had they been better informed,” he said, “the Romans would not have
-harboured unjust prejudices against the religion of Israel; and, as
-your own Renan has said, a little goodwill and a better knowledge
-would perhaps have warded off fearful misunderstandings in regard
-to questions of interest to the whole of humanity. There lacked not
-educated Jews like Philo to explain the laws of Moses to the Romans,
-had the latter been more broad-minded and possessed a more correct
-presentiment of the future. The Romans experienced disgust and fear,
-when face to face with Asiatic thought. Even if they were right in
-fearing it, they were wrong in despising it. To despise a danger
-constitutes a great blunder. Gallio displayed want of foresight when
-stigmatising as criminal fancies and profanities of the vulgar the
-Syrian beliefs.”</p>
-
-<p>“How then could the Hellenist Jews have taught the Romans what they
-were themselves ignorant of?” inquired Langelier. “How could that
-honest Philo, so learned yet so shallow, have revealed to them the
-obscure, confused, and fecund thought of Israel, of which he knew
-nothing himself? What could he have imparted to Gallio concerning the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_132" id="Page_132" title="132"> </a>
-faith of the Jews except literary absurdities? He would have explained
-to him that the doctrine of Moses harmonises with the philosophy of
-Plato. Then, as always, cultured men had no idea of what was passing
-through the minds of the multitudes. The ignorant mob is for ever
-creating gods unknown to the literati.</p>
-
-<p>“One of the strangest and most notable facts of history is the conquest
-of the world by the god of a Syrian tribe, and the victory of Jehovah
-over all the gods of Rome, Greece, Asia, and Egypt. Upon the whole,
-Jesus was simply a <em>nĕbi</em>, and the last of the prophets of Israel.
-Nothing is known about him. We are in the dark as to his life and
-death, for the Evangelists are in nowise biographers. As to the moral
-ideas grouped under his name, they originate in truth with the crowd of
-visionaries who prophesied in the days of the Herods.</p>
-
-<p>“What is called the triumph of Christianity is more accurately the
-triumph of Judaism, and to Israel fell the singular privilege of giving
-a god to the world. It must be admitted that Jehovah deserved his
-sudden elevation in many respects. He was, when he attained to empire,
-the best of the gods. He had made a very bad beginning. Of him it may
-be said what historians say of Augustus, his heart softened with the
-years. At the time when the Israelites settled in the Promised Land,
-Jehovah was<a class="pagenum" name="Page_133" id="Page_133" title="133"> </a> stupid, ferocious, ignorant, cruel, coarse, foul-mouthed,
-indeed the most silly and most cruel of gods. But, under the influence
-of the prophets, there came about a complete transformation. He ceased
-being conservative and formal, and became converted to ideas of peace
-and to dreams of justice. His people were wretched. He began to feel a
-profound pity for all poor wretches. And although he remained at heart
-very much a Jew and very patriotic, he naturally became international
-when becoming revolutionary. He constituted himself the defender of
-the humble and oppressed. He conceived one of those simple ideas
-which captivate the world. He announced universal happiness, and the
-coming of a beneficent Messiah whose reign would be peace. His prophet
-Isaiah prompted him as to this admirable theme with words delightfully
-poetical and of unsurpassed softness:</p>
-
-<p>“‘The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of
-the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations
-shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye and let
-us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;
-and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for
-out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from
-Jerusalem. And he shall judge among nations, and shall rebuke many
-people: and they<a class="pagenum" name="Page_134" id="Page_134" title="134"> </a> shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
-spears into pruning-hooks.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie
-down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling
-together; and a little child shall lead them.’</p>
-
-<p>“In the Roman Empire, the god of the Jews set himself to capture the
-working classes and the social revolution. He addressed himself to the
-unfortunate. Now, in the days of Tiberius and Claudius, there existed
-within the Empire infinitely more unhappy than happy ones. There were
-hordes of slaves. One man alone owned as many as ten thousand. These
-slaves were for the most part sunk in wretchedness. Neither Jupiter,
-nor Juno, nor the Dioscuri troubled themselves about them. The Latin
-gods did not pity their condition. They were the gods of their masters.
-When came from Judæa a god who hearkened to the complaints of the
-humble, they worshipped him. So it is that the religion of Israel
-became the religion of the Roman world. This is what neither St. Paul
-nor Philo could explain to the proconsul of Achaia, for they themselves
-did not see it clearly. And this is what Gallio could not realise.
-He felt, however, that the reign of Jupiter was nearing its end, and
-he predicted the coming of a better god. From love of the national
-antiquities, he went for this god to the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_135" id="Page_135" title="135"> </a> Græco-Latin Olympus, and
-selected him of the blood of Jupiter, through aristocratic feeling.
-Thus it is that he chose Hercules instead of Jehovah.”</p>
-
-<p>“For once,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “you will admit that Gallio was
-mistaken.”</p>
-
-<p>“Less so than you think,” replied Langelier with a smile. “Jehovah
-or Hercules, it mattered little. You may be sure of this: the son of
-Alcmene would not have governed the world otherwise than the father of
-Jesus. Olympian as he might be, he would have had to become the god of
-the slaves, and assume the religious spirit of the new times. The gods
-conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have
-reasons for so doing. Pay attention to this. The spirit which favoured
-the accession in Rome of the god of Israel was not merely the spirit of
-the masses, but also that of the philosophers. At that time, they were
-nearly all Stoics, and believed in one god alone, one on whose behalf
-Plato had laboured and one unconnected by tie of family or friendship
-with the gods of human form of Greece and Rome. This god, through his
-infinity, resembled the god of the Jews. Seneca and Epictetus, who
-venerated him, would have been the first to have been surprised at
-the resemblance, had they been called upon to institute a comparison.
-Nevertheless, they had themselves greatly contributed towards rendering
-acceptable the austere monotheism<a class="pagenum" name="Page_136" id="Page_136" title="136"> </a> of the Judæo-Christians. Doubtless
-a wide gulf separated Stoic haughtiness from Christian humility, but
-Seneca’s morals, consequent upon his sadness and his contempt of
-nature, were paving the way for the Evangelical morals. The Stoics had
-joined issue with life and the beautiful; this rupture, attributed to
-Christianity, was initiated by the philosophers. A couple of centuries
-later, in the time of Constantine, both pagans and Christians will
-have, so to speak, the same morals and philosophy. The Emperor Julian,
-who restored to the Empire its old religion, which had been abolished
-by Constantine the Apostate, is justly regarded as an opponent of
-the Galilean. And, when perusing the petty treatises of Julian, one
-is struck with the number of ideas this enemy of the Christians held
-in common with them. He, like them, is a monotheist; with them, he
-believes in the merits of abstinence, fasting, and mortification of
-the flesh; with them, he despises carnal pleasures, and considers he
-will rise in favour with the gods by avoiding women; finally, he pushes
-Christian sentiment to the degree of rejoicing over his dirty beard and
-his black finger-nails. The Emperor Julian’s morals were almost those
-of St. Gregory Nazianzen. There is nothing in this but what is natural
-and usual. The transformations undergone by morals and ideas are never
-sudden. The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_137" id="Page_137" title="137"> </a>
-and are only seen from afar. Christianity did not secure a foothold
-until such time as the condition of morals accommodated itself to it,
-and as Christianity itself had become adjusted to the condition of
-morals. It was unable to substitute itself for paganism until such time
-as paganism came to resemble it, and itself came to resemble paganism.”</p>
-
-<p>“Granted,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that neither St. Paul nor Gallio saw
-into the future. No one does. Has not one of your friends said: ‘The
-future is concealed even from those who shape it’?”</p>
-
-<p>“Our knowledge of what the future has in store,” resumed Langelier,
-“is in proportion of our acquaintance with the present and the past.
-Science is prophetic. The more a science is accurate, the more can
-accurate prophesies be drawn from it. Mathematics, to which alone
-appertains entire accuracy, communicate a portion of their precision to
-the sciences proceeding from them. Thus it is that accurate predictions
-are made by means of mathematical astronomy and chemistry. One is
-able to calculate eclipses millions of years ahead, without fear of
-one’s calculations being found erroneous, as long as the sun, the
-moon, and the earth shall preserve the same relations as to bulk and
-distance. It is even permitted to us to foresee that these relations
-will be modified in a far distant future. Indeed, it is prophesied,
-on the strength of the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_138" id="Page_138" title="138"> </a> celestial mechanism, that the silver hornéd
-moon will not describe eternally the same circle round our globe, and
-that causes now in operation will, by dint of repetition, change its
-course. You may safely predict that the sun will become darkened, and
-will no longer appear except a shrunken globe over our icy seas, unless
-there should come to it in the interval some new alimentation, a thing
-quite within the possibilities, for the sun is capable of catching
-swarms of asteroids, just as a spider does flies. It is, however, safe
-to predict that it will become extinguished, and that the dislocated
-figures of the constellations will vanish star by star in the darkness
-of space. But what does the death of a star amount to? To the fading
-away of a spark. Let all the stars in the heavens die out just as
-the grasses of the field wither, what matters it to universal life,
-so long as the infinitely tiny elements composing them shall have
-retained within themselves the force which makes and unmakes worlds?
-It is safe to predict an even more complete end of the universe, the
-end of the atom, the dissociation of the last elements of matter, the
-times when protyle, when the amorphous fog will have reconquered its
-illimitable empire over the ruins of all things. And this will form but
-a breathing-spell in God’s respiration. All will begin anew.</p>
-
-<p>“The worlds will again be born to life. They<a class="pagenum" name="Page_139" id="Page_139" title="139"> </a> will live again to die.
-Life and death will succeed each other for all eternity. All sorts of
-combinations will become facts in the infinity of space and time, and
-we shall find ourselves seated once more on the flank of the Forum in
-ruins. But as we shall not know that we are ourselves, it will not be
-us.”</p>
-
-<p>M. Goubin wiped his eye-glass.</p>
-
-<p>“Such ideas are disheartening,” he remarked.</p>
-
-<p>“What then do you hope for, Monsieur Goubin,” asked Nicole Langelier,
-“to gratify your wishes? Do you aspire to preserve of yourself and of
-the world an eternal consciousness? Why do you wish to remember for all
-time that you are Monsieur Goubin? I will not conceal it from you: the
-present universe, which is far from nearing its end, does not seem to
-possess the property of satisfying you in this respect. Do not place
-any more store in those which are to follow, for they will doubtless
-be of the same kind. Do not, however, abandon all hope. It is possible
-that after an indefinite succession of universes, you shall be born
-anew, Monsieur Goubin, with a recollection of your previous existences.
-Renan has said that it was a risk to be taken, and that at all events
-it would not be long in coming. The successions of universe will take
-place for us within less than a second. Time does not count for the
-dead.”</p>
-
-<p>“Are you cognisant,” asked Hippolyte Dufresne<a class="pagenum" name="Page_140" id="Page_140" title="140"> </a>, “of the
-astronomical dreams of Blanqui? The aged Blanqui, a prisoner in the
-Mont-Saint-Michel, could get but a glimpse of the sky through his
-stopped-up window, and had the stars for his only neighbours. This
-made of him an astronomer, and he based on the unity of matter and
-the laws ruling it a strange theory in regard to the identity of the
-worlds. I have read a sixty-page pamphlet of his wherein he sets
-forth that form and life are developed in exactly the same manner in
-a large number of worlds. According to him, a multitude of suns, all
-similar to our own, have, do, or will shed light upon planets in every
-respect similar to the planets of our own system. There is, was, and
-will be, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ad infinitum</i>, Venuses, Mars, Saturns, and Jupiters, quite
-the counterpart of our Saturn, Mars, and Venus, and worlds similar to
-our own. These worlds produce exactly what our world produces, and
-bear fruits, animals, and men resembling in all respects terrestrial
-plants, animals, and human beings. The evolution of life in them is the
-same as that on our globe. Consequently, thought the aged prisoner,
-there is, was and shall be throughout the infinite space myriads of
-Monts-Saint-Michel, each containing a Blanqui.”</p>
-
-<p>“We know but little of the worlds whose suns shine upon our nights,”
-resumed Langelier. “We perceive, however, that subjected to the same<a class="pagenum" name="Page_141" id="Page_141" title="141"> </a>
-mechanical and chemical laws, they differ from our own world and among
-themselves in extent and form, and that the substances burning in them
-are not distributed among all of them in the same proportions. These
-differences must produce an infinity of others which we do not suspect.
-A pebble is sufficient to change the fate of an Empire. Who knows?
-Perchance, Monsieur Goubin, many times multiplied and disseminated
-through myriads of worlds, has wiped, wipes, and shall eternally wipe
-clean his eye-glass.”</p>
-
-<p>Joséphin Leclerc did not suffer his friends to expatiate any further on
-astronomical dreams.</p>
-
-<p>“I am,” he said, “like Monsieur Goubin, of the opinion that all this
-would be heartrending were it not too far from us to affect us. What is
-of paramount interest for us, what we are curious to know is the fate
-of those who will come immediately after us in this world.”</p>
-
-<p>“There is no doubt,” said Langelier, “that the succession of worlds
-only fills us with sad astonishment. We should welcome with a more
-fraternal and friendly eye the future of civilisation, and the
-immediate destiny of our fellow men. The closer at hand the future,
-the more we are concerned about it. Unfortunately, moral and political
-sciences are inaccurate, and full of uncertainty. They have but an
-imperfect knowledge of the so far accomplished<a class="pagenum" name="Page_142" id="Page_142" title="142"> </a> developments of
-human evolution, and can therefore not instruct us concerning the
-developments which remain to be completed. Equipped with hardly any
-memory, they have little or no presentiment. This is why scientific
-minds feel an insurmountable repugnance to attempt investigations, the
-uselessness of which they know, and they dare not even confess to a
-curiosity which they entertain no hope of satisfying. Willingly would
-the task be undertaken to discover what would happen, were men to
-become wiser. Plato, Sir Thomas More, Campanella, Fénelon, Cabet, and
-Paul Adam<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> have reconstructed their particular city in Atlantis, in
-the Island of Utopia, in the Sun, at Salentinum, in Icaria, in Malaya,
-and established there an abstract social administration. Others, like
-the philosopher Sébastien Mercier, and the socialist-poet William
-Morris, dived into a far-off future. But they took their system of
-morals with them. They discovered a new Atlantis, and it is a city
-of dreamland which they have harmoniously built there. Shall I also
-quote Maurice Spronck?<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> He shows us the French Republic conquered by
-the Moors, in the 230th year of its foundation. He argues thus, in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_143" id="Page_143" title="143"> </a>
-order to induce us to hand over the government to the Conservatives
-whom alone he considers capable of warding off so great a disaster.
-Meanwhile Camille Mauclair,<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> trusting in humanity to come, reads in
-the future the victorious resistance, of Socialistic Europe against
-Mussulman Asia. Daniel Halévy dreads not the Moors, but, with greater
-show of reason, the Russians. He narrates, in his <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Histoire de quatre
-ans</i>, the foundation, in 2001, of the United States of Europe. But
-he seeks to show us more especially that the moral equilibrium of
-nations is unstable, and that a facility suddenly introduced into the
-conditions of life may suffice to let loose on a multitude of men the
-worst scourges and the most cruel sufferings.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p class="label">
-<a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_1">[A]</a>
-Paul Adam, journalist and playwright; contributor to the
-<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Revue de Paris</i> and the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Nouvelle Revue</i>.</p>
-
-<p class="label">
-<a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_2">[B]</a>
-Maurice Spronck, journalist and barrister; contributor
-to the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Journal des Débats</i>, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Revue
-bleue</i>, and the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Revue hebdomadaire</i>.</p>
-
-<p class="label">
-<a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_3">[C]</a>
-Camille Faust, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">dit</i> Camille Mauclair, art critic and
-lecturer; author of works on Greuze, Fragonard, Schumann, Rodin, and of
-<em>De Watteau à Whistler</em>.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>“Few are those who have sought to know the future, out of pure
-curiosity, and without moral intention or optimistic designs. I
-know no other than H. G. Wells who, journeying through future ages,
-has discovered for humanity a fate he did not, according to every
-indication, expect; for the institution of an anthropophagous
-proletariat and an edible aristocracy is a cruel solution of social
-questions. Yet such is the fate H. G. Wells assigns to posterity. All
-the other prophets of whom I have any<a class="pagenum" name="Page_144" id="Page_144" title="144"> </a> knowledge content themselves
-with entrusting to future centuries the realisation of their dreams.
-They do not unveil the future, being satisfied with conjuring it up.</p>
-
-<p>“The truth is that men do not look so far ahead without fright.
-Many consider that such an investigation is not only useless, but
-pernicious; while those most ready to believe that future events are
-discoverable are those who would most dread to discover them. This fear
-is doubtless based on profound reasons. All morals, all religions,
-embody a revelation of humanity’s destiny. The greater part of men,
-whether they admit it to, or conceal it from, themselves, would recoil
-from investigating these august revelations, to discover the emptiness
-of their anticipations. They are accustomed to endure the idea of
-manners totally different from their own, if once those manners are
-buried in the past. Thereupon they congratulate themselves on the
-progress made by morality. But, as their morality is in the main
-governed by their manners, or rather by what they allow one to see of
-them, they dare not confess to themselves that morality, which has
-continually changed with manners, up to their own day, will undergo
-a further change when they have passed out of this life, and that
-future men are liable to conceive an idea entirely at variance with
-their own as to what is permissible or not. It would go against the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_145" id="Page_145" title="145"> </a>
-grain with them to admit that their virtues are merely transitory,
-and their gods decrepit. And, although the past is there to point out
-to them ever-changing and shifting rights and duties, they would look
-upon themselves as dupes were they to foresee that future humanity is
-to create for itself new rights, duties and gods. Finally, they fear
-disgracing themselves in the eyes of their contemporaries, in assuming
-the horrible immorality which future morality stands for. Such are the
-obstacles to a quest of the future. Look at Gallio and his friends;
-they would not have dared to foresee the equality of classes in the
-matter of marriage, the abolition of slavery, the rout of the legions,
-the fall of the Empire, the end of Rome, nor even the death of those
-very gods in whom they had all but ceased to believe.”</p>
-
-<p>“’Tis possible,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “but it is time for us to dine.”</p>
-
-<p>And, leaving the Forum bathed in the calm light of the moon, they
-wended their way through the populous streets of the city towards a
-famed but cheap eating-house in the Via Condotti.</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_146" id="Page_146" title="146"> </a></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_147" id="Page_147" title="147"> </a>
-<a name="iv" id="iv"></a>IV</h2>
-
-
-<div class="width80">
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-t_drop.jpg" width="80" height="89" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">The</span> room was small, and hung with a smoke-stained paper dating from the
-pontificate of Pio Nono. Ancient lithographs were dependent from the
-walls, representing Cavour with his tortoise-shell-framed spectacles
-and collar-like beard, the leonine visage of Garibaldi, the stupendous
-moustaches of Victor Emanuel, a classic placing side by side of the
-combined symbols of the revolution and of the supreme power, a popular
-testimony to the Italian spirit which excels in juxtapositions, and
-in whose midst, in our own day, in Rome, the fulminating Pope and the
-excommunicated King daily exchange assurances of good-neighbourship,
-with an exquisite grasp of politics, and not without a certain flavour
-of delicate comedy. The mahogany sideboard was laden with plated
-chafing-dishes and alabaster goblets. The establishment affected for
-new things a contempt appropriate to long-standing renown.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_148" id="Page_148" title="148"> </a>
-Seated around a table bedecked with roses, and with flasks of Chianti
-before them, the five continued their philosophic discourse.</p>
-
-<p>“It is quite true,” said Nicole Langelier, “that the heart fails in
-the case of many men, when gazing into the abyss of future events. It
-is moreover certain that our all too imperfect knowledge of facts past
-and gone does not supply us with the elements required to enable us
-to determine accurately what is to succeed them. However, since the
-past of human social organisations is in part known to us, the future
-of those societies, a continuation and consequence of their past, is
-not wholly beyond our ken. It is not impossible to observe certain
-social phenomena, and to define from the conditions under which they
-have already occurred, the conditions under which they will reappear.
-We are not barred, when witnessing the commencement of an order of
-facts, from comparing it with a past order of analogous facts, and
-from deducing from the completion of the second a like completion of
-the first. By way of example: when observing that the forms of labour
-are changeable, that serfdom has succeeded slavery, salaried labour,
-serfdom, new methods of production may be anticipated; when it is shown
-that industrial capital has for barely a century taken the place of
-the small artisans and peasant property, one is led to ponder over the
-form which is to succeed capital;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_149" id="Page_149" title="149"> </a> when studying the manner in which
-was carried out the redemption of the feudal burdens and conditions
-of servitude, one is enabled to conceive how the redemption of the
-means of production nowadays constituting private ownership may some
-day be carried out. By studying the great Services of the State now in
-operation, it is possible to form a conception of future socialistic
-methods of production; and, after having thus investigated in several
-respects the present and the past of human industry, we shall, lacking
-certainties, determine by aid of probabilities whether collectivism
-is to be realised some day, not because it is just, for there is no
-reason for believing in the triumph of justice, but because it is
-the necessary sequel to the present state of things, and the fatal
-consequence of capitalistic evolution.</p>
-
-<p>“Let us, if you like, take another example: we possess some experience
-of the life and death of religions. The end of Roman polytheism in
-particular, is familiar to us. Its lamentable end enables us to imagine
-that of Christianity, whose decline we are witnessing.</p>
-
-<p>“We may similarly seek to find out whether future humanity will be
-bellicose or peaceful.”</p>
-
-<p>“I am curious to learn,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “how to set about it.”</p>
-
-<p>M. Goubin shook his head, saying:</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_150" id="Page_150" title="150"> </a>
-“Such a quest is useless. We know its result beforehand. War will last
-as long as the world.”</p>
-
-<p>“There is nothing to prove it,” replied Langelier, “and a consideration
-of the past leads one to believe, on the contrary, that war is not one
-of the essential conditions of social life.”</p>
-
-<p>And Langelier, while waiting for the <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">minestra</i> (soup) which was long
-in making its appearance, developed the foregoing idea, without,
-however, departing from the moderation characterising his mind.</p>
-
-<p>“Although the early periods of the human race,” he said, “are lost to
-us in impenetrable darkness, it is certain that men were not always
-warlike. They were not so during the long ages of the pastoral life;
-the memory of which survives only in a small number of words common
-to all Indo-European languages, and which reveal innocent manners.
-And there are reasons for believing that these peaceful pastoral
-centuries had a far longer duration than the agricultural, industrial,
-and commercial periods which, following them in a necessary progress,
-brought about between tribes and nations a state of all but constant
-war.</p>
-
-<p>“It was by force of arms that it was most frequently sought to acquire
-property, lands, women, slaves, and cattle. At first, wars were waged
-between village and village. Next, the vanquished, joining hands
-with the victors, formed a nation, and wars<a class="pagenum" name="Page_151" id="Page_151" title="151"> </a> occurred between nation
-and nation. Each of these peoples, in order to retain possession of
-the acquired riches, or to make further acquisitions, contended with
-neighbouring peoples for the possession of strongholds securing the
-command of roads, mountain passes, river courses, and the seashore. In
-the end, nations formed confederations, and contracted alliances. Thus
-it came about that men banded together; as they increased in strength,
-instead of contending for the goods of the earth, formally bartered
-them. The community of sentiments and interests gradually became
-broadened. A day came when Rome imagined she had established it the
-world over. Augustus thought he had inaugurated the era of universal
-peace.</p>
-
-<p>“We know how this illusion was gradually and savagely dissipated, and
-how the barbarian hordes overwhelmed the Roman peace. These barbarians,
-who had settled within the Empire, cut one another’s throats on its
-ruins, for a space of fourteen centuries, and founded in carnage
-countries baptized in blood. Of such was the life of nations in the
-Middle Ages, and the constitution of the great European monarchies.</p>
-
-<p>“In those days, a state of war was alone possible and conceivable.
-All the forces of the world were organised solely for the purpose of
-maintaining it.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_152" id="Page_152" title="152"> </a>
-“If the reawakening of thought, at the time of the Renaissance,
-permitted a few sparse minds to conceive better regulated relations
-between nations, at one and the same time, the burning desire to
-invent, and the thirst for knowledge supplied fresh food to the warrior
-instinct. The discovery of the West Indies, the exploration of Africa,
-the navigation of the Pacific Ocean, opened up vast territories
-to European avidity. The white kingdoms joined issue over the
-extermination of the red, yellow, and black races, and for the space of
-four centuries gave themselves up madly to the pillaging of three great
-divisions of the world. This is what is styled modern civilisation.</p>
-
-<p>“During this uninterrupted succession of deeds of rapine and violence,
-Europeans acquired a knowledge of the extent and configuration of
-the earth. As they progressed in this knowledge, so did their work
-of destruction proceed apace. To the present day, the whites come in
-contact with the black or the yellow races but to enslave or massacre
-them. The peoples whom we call barbarians know us so far through our
-crimes only.</p>
-
-<p>“For all that, those navigations, those explorations undertaken in
-a spirit of savage cupidity, these tracks by land and by sea opened
-up to conquerors, adventurers, hunters of and traders in men, these
-life-destroying colonisations, this brutal impulse<a class="pagenum" name="Page_153" id="Page_153" title="153"> </a> which has led and
-still leads one-half of humanity to destroy the other, are the fatal
-conditions of a further progress of civilisation, and the terrible
-means which shall have prepared, for a still undetermined future, the
-peace of the world.</p>
-
-<p>“This time, ’tis the whole world assimilated, in spite of enormous
-dissimilarities, to the state of the Roman Empire under Augustus.
-The Roman peace was the fruit of conquest. Universal peace will most
-assuredly not be brought about by the same means. No Empire is there
-to-day which can lay claim to the hegemony of the lands and seas
-covering the globe, known and surveyed at last. But, in spite of their
-being less apparent than those of political and military domination,
-the bonds which are beginning to unite the whole of humanity, and no
-longer merely a part of humanity, are none the less real; they are both
-more supple and more solid, more intimate and infinite in variety,
-since they are connected, athwart the fictions of public life, with the
-realities of social life.</p>
-
-<p>“The increasing multiplicity of communications and exchanges, the
-compulsory solidarity of the financial markets of every capital, of
-commercial markets vainly striving to guarantee their independence by
-recourse to unfortunate expedients, the rapid growth of international
-socialism, seem likely to guarantee, sooner or later, the union of the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_154" id="Page_154" title="154"> </a>
-peoples of every continent. If at the present moment the Imperialist
-spirit of the great States and the haughty ambitions of armed
-nations seem to give the lie to these previsions, and to damn these
-aspirations, it will be perceived that in reality modern nationalism
-amounts merely to a confused aspiration towards a more and more vast
-union of intellects and wills, and that the dream of a greater England,
-a greater Germany, a greater America, leads, will or do whatever you
-may, to the dream of a greater humanity, and to a partnership between
-nations for the common exploitation of the riches of the earth....”</p>
-
-<p>The speech was interrupted by the appearance of the tavern-keeper
-bearing a steaming soup-tureen and grated cheese.</p>
-
-<p>And, from amid the hot and aromatic vapour of the soup, Nicole
-Langelier concluded his argument with these words:</p>
-
-<p>“There will doubtless be further wars. The savage instincts coupled
-with the natural desires, pride and hunger, which have embroiled the
-world for so many centuries, will again disturb it. The human masses
-have so far not found their equilibrium. The sagacity of nations is not
-yet sufficiently methodical to secure the common welfare, by means of
-the freedom and the facility of exchanges, man has so far not come to
-be looked up to with respect<a class="pagenum" name="Page_155" id="Page_155" title="155"> </a> everywhere by man, the several portions
-of humanity are not yet about to associate harmoniously for the purpose
-of building the cells and organs of one and the same body. It will not
-be vouchsafed even unto the youngest of us to witness the close of the
-era of arms. But, we feel within us a presentiment of these better
-times which we are not to experience. If we extend into the future the
-present trend, we may even now determine the establishment of more
-perfect and frequent communications between all races and all nations,
-a more general and stronger feeling of human solidarity, the rational
-organisation of labour, and the coming of the United States of the
-World.</p>
-
-<p>“Universal peace will become a fact some day, not because men will
-become better (’tis more than we may hope for), but because a new order
-of things, a new science, and new economic necessities will force on
-men the state of peace, just as formerly the very conditions of their
-existence placed and kept them in a state of war.”</p>
-
-<p>“Nicole Langelier, a rose has shed a leaf in your glass,” said Giacomo
-Boni. “This has not taken place without the permission of the gods. Let
-us drink to the future peace of the world.”</p>
-
-<p>Raising his glass, Joséphin Leclerc remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“This wine of Chianti has a tart savour, and a light sparkle. Let us
-drink to peace, the while<a class="pagenum" name="Page_156" id="Page_156" title="156"> </a> Russians and Japanese are waging a bitter
-war in Manchuria and in Korea Bay.”</p>
-
-<p>“That war,” resumed Langelier, “marks one of the great periods in the
-history of the world. And, in order to grasp its meaning, we must hark
-back two thousand years.</p>
-
-<p>“The Romans, assuredly, did not suspect the vastness of the barbarian
-world, and had no conception of those immense human reservoirs which
-were to burst on them one fine day, and submerge them. They did not
-suspect that there existed in the world any other than the Roman peace.
-And yet, an older and vaster one there was, the Chinese peace.</p>
-
-<p>“Not but what their merchants had business relations with the
-merchants of Serica. The latter were wont to bring raw silk to a spot
-situated to the north of the Pamir table-land, named the Tower of
-Stone. The merchants of the Empire went thither. Bolder Latin traders
-penetrated as far as the Gulf of Tong-King and the Chinese coasts up
-to Hang-chau-fu, or Hanoi. Nevertheless, the Romans did not conceive
-that Serica constituted an Empire more densely populated than their own
-one, richer, and more advanced in agriculture and political economy.
-The Chinese, on their part, knew the white men. Their annals mention
-the fact that the Emperor An-tung, under which name we recognise
-Marcus<a class="pagenum" name="Page_157" id="Page_157" title="157"> </a> Aurelius Antoninus, despatched an embassy to them, which
-was perhaps merely an expedition of navigators and merchants. But
-they were ignorant of the fact that a civilisation more seething and
-violent than their own, as well as more prolific and infinitely more
-expansive, was spread over one of the faces of the globe of which they
-covered another face: the Chinese, agriculturists and gardeners full
-of experience, honest and expert merchants, led a happy life, owing to
-their system of exchange and to their immense associations of credit.
-Contented with their subtle science, their exquisite politeness, their
-singularly human piety, and their immutable wisdom, they were doubtless
-not anxious to become acquainted with the ways of life and thought
-of the white men who had come from the land of Cæsar. Perchance the
-ambassadors of An-tung may have seemed somewhat gross and barbarian to
-them.</p>
-
-<p>“The two great civilisations, the yellow and the white, continued
-ignorant of each other until the day when the Portuguese, having
-doubled the Cape of Good Hope, settled down to trade at Macao.
-Merchants and Christian missionaries established themselves in China,
-and indulged in every kind of violence and rapine. The Chinese
-tolerated them, in the manner of men accustomed to works of patience,
-and marvellously capable of endurance; nevertheless, they could on
-occasion take life with all<a class="pagenum" name="Page_158" id="Page_158" title="158"> </a> the refinements of cruelty. For nearly
-three whole centuries the Jesuits were, in the Middle Kingdom, a source
-of endless disturbances. In our own times, the Christian acquired the
-habit of sending jointly or separately into that vast Empire, whenever
-order was disturbed, soldiers who restored it by means of theft,
-rape, pillage, murder, and incendiarism, and of proceeding at short
-intervals with the pacific penetration of the country with rifles and
-guns. The poorly armed Chinese either defend themselves badly or not
-at all, and so they are massacred with delightful facility. They are
-polite and ceremonious, but are reproached with cherishing feeble
-sentiments of affection for Europeans. The grievances we have against
-them are greatly of the order of those which Mr. Du Chaillu cherished
-towards his gorilla. Mr. Du Chaillu, while in a forest, brought down
-with his rifle the mother of a gorilla. In its death, the brute was
-still pressing its young to its bosom. He tore it from this embrace,
-and dragged it with him in a cage across Africa, for the purpose of
-selling it in Europe. Now, the young animal gave him just cause for
-complaint. It was unsociable, and actually starved itself to death.
-‘I was powerless,’ says Mr. Du Chaillu, ‘to correct its evil nature.’
-We complain of the Chinese with as great a show of reason as Mr. Du
-Chaillu of his gorilla.</p>
-
-<p>“In 1901, order having been disturbed at Peking,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_159" id="Page_159" title="159"> </a> the troops of the
-five Great Powers, under the command of a German Field-Marshal,
-restored it by the customary means. Having in this fashion covered
-themselves with military glory, the five Powers signed one of the
-innumerable treaties by which they guarantee the integrity of the very
-China whose provinces they divide among themselves.</p>
-
-<p>“Russia’s share was Manchuria, and she closed Korea to Japanese trade.
-Japan, which in 1894 had beaten the Chinese on land and on sea, and
-had taken a part, in 1901, in the pacifying action of the Powers, saw
-with concentrated fury the advance of the voracious and slow-footed
-she-bear. And, while the huge brute indolently stretched out its muzzle
-towards the Japanese beehive, the yellow bees, arming their wings and
-stings together, riddled it with burning punctures.</p>
-
-<p>“‘It is a colonial war,’ was the expression used by a high-placed
-Russian official to my friend Georges Bourdon.<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> Now, the fundamental
-principal of every colonial war is that the European should be more
-powerful than the peoples whom he is fighting; this is as clear as
-noonday. It is understood that in these kinds of wars the European is
-to attack with artillery, while the Asiatic or African is of course
-to defend himself with arrows, clubs, assegais and tomahawks. It
-is tolerated that he should procure<a class="pagenum" name="Page_160" id="Page_160" title="160"> </a> a few antiquated flint-locks
-and cartridge-pouches; this aids in rendering colonisation more
-glorious. But in no case is it permissible that he should be armed
-and instructed in European fashion. His fleet must consist of junks,
-canoes and ‘dug-outs.’ Should he perchance purchase ships from European
-ship-owners, such ships shall naturally be unfit for use. The Chinese
-who fill their arsenals with porcelain shells conform to the rules of
-colonial warfare.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p class="label">
-<a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_4">[D]</a>
-M. Georges Bourdon, journalist, on the staff of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le
-Figaro</i>.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>“The Japanese have departed from these rules. They wage war in
-accordance with the principles taught in France by General Bonnal. They
-greatly outweighed their adversaries in knowledge and intelligence.
-While fighting better than Europeans, they show no respect for
-consecrated usages, and act to a certain degree in a fashion contrary
-to the law of nations.</p>
-
-<p>“’Tis in vain that serious individuals like Monsieur Edmond Théry<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a>
-demonstrated to them that they were bound to be beaten, in the superior
-interest of the European market and in conformity with the most firmly
-established economic laws. Vainly did the proconsul of Indo-China,
-Monsieur Doumer himself, call upon them to suffer, and at short notice,
-decisive defeats on sea and on<a class="pagenum" name="Page_161" id="Page_161" title="161"> </a> land. ‘What a financial sadness would
-bow down our hearts,’ exclaimed this great man, ‘were Bezobrazoff and
-Alexeieff not to extract another million out of the Korean forests.
-They are kings. Like them, I was a king: our cause is a common one. Oh
-ye Japanese! Imitate in their gentleness the copper-coloured folk over
-whom I reigned so gloriously under Méline.’ In vain did Dr. Charles
-Richet,<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> skeleton in hand, represent to them that being prognathous,
-and not having the muscles of their calves sufficiently developed, they
-were under the obligation of seeking flight in the trees when face to
-face with the Russians, who are brachycephalous and as such eminently
-civilising, as was demonstrated when they drowned five thousand Chinese
-in the Amur. ‘Bear in mind that you are links between monkey and man,’
-obligingly said to them my Lord Professor Richet, ‘as a consequence of
-which, if you should defeat the Russians or Finno-Letto-Ugro-Slavs, it
-would be exactly as if monkeys were to beat you. Is it not plain to
-you?’ They heeded him not.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p class="label">
-<a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_5">[E]</a>
-M. Edmond Théry, journalist, on the staff of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le
-Figaro</i>. Has been entrusted by the French Government with several
-politico-economic missions; author of several works in this connection.</p>
-
-<p class="label">
-<a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_6">[F]</a>
-Dr. Charles Richet, a noted physician, who has written
-plays, and is the author of several works on physiology and sociology.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>“At the present moment, the Russians are paying the penalty, in the
-waters of Japan and in the gorges of Manchuria, not only of their
-grasping and brutal<a class="pagenum" name="Page_162" id="Page_162" title="162"> </a> policy in the East, but of the colonial policy of
-all Europe. They are now expiating, not merely their own crimes, but
-those of the whole of military and commercial Christianity. When saying
-this, I do not mean to say that there is a justice in the world. But
-we witness a strange whirligig of things, and brute force, up to now
-the sole judge of human actions, indulges occasionally in unexpected
-pranks. Its sudden starts aside destroy an equilibrium thought to be
-stable. And its pranks, which are ever the work of some hidden rule,
-bring about interesting results. The Japanese cross the Yalu and defeat
-the Russians in good form. Their sailors annihilate artistically a
-European fleet. Immediately do we discern that a danger threatens
-us. If it indeed exists, who created it? It was not the Japanese who
-sought out the Russians. It was not the yellow men who hunted up the
-whites. We there and then make the discovery of a Yellow Peril. For
-many long years have Asiatics been familiar with the White Peril. The
-looting of the Summer Palace, the massacres of Pekin, the drownings of
-Blagovestchenk, the dismemberment of China, were these not enough to
-alarm the Chinese? As to the Japanese, could they feel secure under
-the guns of Port Arthur? We created the White Peril. The White Peril
-has engendered the Yellow Peril. We have here concatenations giving to
-the ancient Necessity<a class="pagenum" name="Page_163" id="Page_163" title="163"> </a> which rules the world an appearance of divine
-Justice, and must perforce admire the astonishing behaviour of that
-blind queen of men and gods, when seeing Japan, formerly so cruel to
-the Chinese and Koreans, and the unpaid accessory to the crimes of
-Europeans in China, become the avenger of China, and the hope of the
-yellow race.</p>
-
-<p>“It does not, however, appear at first sight that the Yellow Peril at
-which European economists are terrified is to be compared to the White
-Peril suspended over Asia. The Chinese do not send to Paris, Berlin,
-and St. Petersburg missionaries to teach Christians the Fung-chui, and
-sow disorder in European affairs. A Chinese expeditionary force did
-not land in Quiberon Bay to demand of the Government of the Republic
-<em>extra-territoriality</em>, <abbr title="that is">i.e.</abbr>, the right of trying by a tribunal of
-mandarins cases pending between Chinese and Europeans. Admiral Togo
-did not come and bombard Brest roads with a dozen battleships, for the
-purpose of improving Japanese trade in France. The flower of French
-nationalism, the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">élite</i> of our Trublions, did not besiege in their
-mansions in the Avenues Hoche and Marceau the Legations of China and
-of Japan, and Marshal Oyama did not, for the same reason, lead the
-combined armies of the Far East to the Boulevard de la Madeleine to
-demand the punishment of the foreigner-hating Trublions. He did not
-burn<a class="pagenum" name="Page_164" id="Page_164" title="164"> </a> Versailles in the name of a higher civilisation. The armies of
-the Great Asiatic Powers did not carry away to Tokio and Peking the
-Louvre paintings and the silver service of the Elysée.</p>
-
-<p>“No indeed! Monsieur Edmond Théry himself admits that the yellow men
-are not sufficiently civilised to imitate the whites so faithfully. Nor
-does he foresee that they will ever rise to so high a moral culture.
-How could it be possible for them to possess our virtues? They are not
-Christians. But men entitled to speak consider that the Yellow Peril
-is none the less to be dreaded for all that it is economic. Japan, and
-China organised by Japan, threaten us, in all the markets of Europe,
-with a competition frightful, monstrous, enormous, and deformed, the
-mere idea of which causes the hair of the economists to stand on end.
-That is why Japanese and Chinese must be exterminated. There can be
-no doubt about the matter. But war must also be declared against the
-United States to prevent it from selling iron and steel at a lower
-price than our manufacturers less well equipped in machinery.</p>
-
-<p>“Let us for once admit the truth, and for a moment cease flattering
-ourselves. Old Europe and new Europe&mdash;for that is America’s true
-name&mdash;have inaugurated economic war. Each and every nation is waging
-an industrial struggle against the others. Everywhere does production
-arm itself furiously<a class="pagenum" name="Page_165" id="Page_165" title="165"> </a> against production. We are displaying bad grace
-when we complain that we are witnessing fresh competing and disturbing
-products invade the market of the world thus thrown into confusion. Of
-what use are our lamentations? That might is right is our god. If Tokio
-is the weaker, it shall be in the wrong and it shall be made to feel
-it; if it is the stronger, right will be on its side, and we shall have
-no reproach to cast at it. Where is the nation in the world entitled to
-speak in the name of justice?</p>
-
-<p>“We have taught the Japanese both the capitalistic <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i> and war.
-They are a cause of alarm because they are becoming like ourselves.
-In truth, it is awful. They dare to defend themselves with European
-weapons against Europeans. Their generals, their naval officers, who
-have studied in England, in Germany, and in France, reflect honour on
-their instructors. Several of them have followed the classes of our
-special military schools. The Russian Grand Dukes, who feared that no
-good could come out of military institutions too democratic to their
-taste, must feel reassured.</p>
-
-<p>“I am unable to foretell the issue of the war. The Russian Empire
-opposes to the methodical energy of the Japanese its irresolute forces
-which the savage imbecility of its government restrains, the dishonesty
-of a voracious administration robs, and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_166" id="Page_166" title="166"> </a> military incapacity leads to
-disaster. The stupendousness of its impotence and the depths of its
-disorganisation stand revealed. Withal, its golden reservoirs, kept
-filled by its rich creditors, are all but inexhaustible. On the other
-hand, its enemy has no other resources than onerous loans obtained with
-difficulty, of which victory itself may perchance deprive them. For
-while English and Americans are one in assisting it to weaken Russia,
-they do not intend that it shall become powerful and to be feared. It
-is hard to predict the final victory of one combatant over the other.
-But if Japan makes the yellow men respected by the white men, it will
-have greatly served the cause of humanity, and paved the way unawares
-and doubtless against its own wish for the pacific organisation of the
-world.”</p>
-
-<p>“What do you mean,” said M. Goubin, raising his eyes from his plate
-filled with a savoury <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">fritto</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“It is feared,” continued Nicole Langelier, “that Japan grown to
-manhood will educate China, teach it to defend itself and to exploit
-its wealth itself, and that Japan will create a strong China. No need
-to look upon such a contingency with alarm; it should, on the contrary,
-be hoped for in the universal interest. Strong nations co-operate to
-the harmony and wealth of the world. Weak nations, like China and
-Turkey, are a perpetual cause of disturbances and perils. But we are
-ever in too great a haste in our fears<a class="pagenum" name="Page_167" id="Page_167" title="167"> </a> and hopes. Should victorious
-Japan undertake to organise the old yellow Empire, it will not succeed
-in its task that quickly. It will require time to teach China that a
-China exists. For she knows it not, and as long as she is unaware of
-it, there will not be any China. A people exists only in the knowledge
-possessed by it of its existence. There are 350,000,000 Chinese, but
-they are not aware of the fact. As long as they have not counted
-themselves, they will not count for anything. They will not even exist
-by dint of numbers. ‘Number off!’ is the first word of command spoken
-by the drill-sergeant to his men. He is there and then teaching them
-the principle of societies. But it takes a long time for 350,000,000
-men to number themselves. Nevertheless, Ular, who is a European out
-of the common, since he believes that one should be humane and just
-towards the Chinese, informs us that a great national movement is
-simmering in all the provinces of the huge empire.”</p>
-
-<p>“And even should it happen,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that victorious
-Japan came to infuse into Mongols, Chinese, and Tibetans a
-consciousness of themselves, and caused them to be respected by the
-white races, in what way would the peace of the world be better
-assured, and the conquering mania of nations be kept within stricter
-bounds? Would not negro humanity still remain to be exterminated?<a class="pagenum" name="Page_168" id="Page_168" title="168"> </a>
-Where is the black nation which will insure the respecting of negroes
-by the white and yellow races?”</p>
-
-<p>“But,” interposed Nicole Langelier, “who can define how far one of the
-great human races may go? The blacks are not, like the red man, dying
-out through contact with the Europeans. Where is the prophet who will
-venture to tell the 200,000,000 African blacks that their posterity
-will never enjoy wealth and peace on the lakes and great rivers? The
-white men passed through the ages of caves and lacustrine villages.
-They were at that time wild and naked. They dried rude potteries in the
-sun. Their chiefs led barbarian dances at which they shouted. They knew
-no other sciences than those of their sorcerers. Since those days they
-have built the Parthenon, conceived geometry, subjected the expression
-of their thought and the motions of their body to the laws of harmony.</p>
-
-<p>“Are you then going to say to the African negroes: ‘You shall for ever
-carry on an internecine war between tribe and tribe, and you shall
-inflict upon one another atrocities and absurd tortures; King Gléglé,
-permeated with a religious idea, shall for all time have prisoners tied
-up in a basket and thrown from the roof of his royal hut; you shall for
-ever devour with enjoyment the strips of flesh torn from the decomposed
-cadavers of your aged<a class="pagenum" name="Page_169" id="Page_169" title="169"> </a> relations; for ever shall explorers unload
-their rifles on you, and smoke you out in your kraals; the wonderful
-Christian soldier will enjoy in his bravery the amusement of hacking
-your women to pieces; the gay and festive sailor from the befogged seas
-shall for all time kick in the bellies of your little children, just to
-take the stiffness out of his knee-joints? Can you safely prophesy to
-one-third of humanity a state of perpetual ignominy?</p>
-
-<p>“I am unable to say whether one day, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe predicted in
-1840, a life will awaken in Africa full of a splendour and magnificence
-unknown to the cold-blooded races of the West, and whether art will
-blossom forth in new and dazzling forms. The blacks possess a keen
-appreciation of music. It may happen that a delightful negro art of
-dance and song shall see the light of day. In the meanwhile, the
-coloured folk of the Southern States are making rapid strides in
-capitalistic civilisation. Monsieur Jean Finot<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> has recently supplied
-us with information on the subject.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p class="label">
-<a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_7">[G]</a>
-M. Jean Finot, editor of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">La Revue</i>, and contributor to
-several French and European publications.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>“Fifty years ago they did not, as a whole, own two hundred and
-fifty acres of land. Nowadays their property is valued at over
-£160,000,000. They were illiterate. To-day fifty per cent. of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_170" id="Page_170" title="170"> </a> them
-can read and write. There are black novelists, poets, economists, and
-philanthropists.</p>
-
-<p>“The half-breeds, the issue of master and slave, are singularly
-intelligent and vigorous. The coloured men, both cunning and ferocious,
-instinctive and calculating, will gradually (so one of them has
-confided to me) reap the advantage of number, and one day lord it over
-the effeminate creole race which exercises so lightly over the blacks
-its fitful cruelty. It may be that the mulatto of genius, who will make
-the children of the whites pay dearly the blood of the negroes lynched
-by their fathers, is already born.”</p>
-
-<p>M. Goubin primed himself with his powerful eye-glass, and remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“Were the Japanese to be victorious, they would take Indo-China from
-us.”</p>
-
-<p>“Thereby rendering us a great service,” answered Langelier. “Colonies
-are the curse of nations.”</p>
-
-<p>M. Goubin’s indignant silence was his sole reply.</p>
-
-<p>“I cannot listen to such statements,” exclaimed Joséphin Leclerc. “We
-require outlets for our products, and territories for our industrial
-and commercial expansion. What are you thinking of, Langelier? One
-policy alone governs Europe, America, and the world to-day&mdash;colonial
-policy.”</p>
-
-<p>Nicole Langelier, unruffled, replied:</p>
-
-<p>“Colonial policy is the most recent form of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_171" id="Page_171" title="171"> </a> barbarism, or, if you
-prefer, the term of civilisation. I make no distinction between these
-two expressions; they are identical. What men call civilisation is
-the present condition of manners, while what they style barbarism are
-anterior conditions. The manners of to-day will be styled barbarian
-when they shall be of the past. It is patent to me that our manners and
-morals embody the idea that strong nations shall destroy the weaker
-ones. Of such is the principle of the law of nations.</p>
-
-<p>“It remains to be seen, however, whether conquests abroad always
-constitute a good stroke of business for nations. It would not seem so.
-What have Mexico and Peru done for Spain? Brazil for Portugal? Batavia
-for Holland? There are various kinds of colonies. There are colonies
-which afford to unfortunate Europeans desert and uncultivated lands.
-These, loyal as long as they remain poor, separate from the mother
-country as soon as they become prosperous. Some there are which are
-inhabitable; these supply raw material, and import manufactured goods.
-Now it is plain that these colonies enrich, not those who govern them,
-but whoever trades with them. The greater part of the time they are
-not worth what they cost. Moreover, they may at any moment expose the
-mother country to military disasters.”</p>
-
-<p>“How about England?” interrupted M. Goubin.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_172" id="Page_172" title="172"> </a>
-“England is less a nation than a race. The Anglo-Saxons know no
-fatherland but the sea. England, looked upon as wealthy in her vast
-domains, owes her fortune and her power to her commerce. It is not her
-colonies which should be envied her, but her merchants, the authors of
-her wealth. Do you imagine, by way of illustration, that the Transvaal
-represents so very good a stroke of business for her? For all that, it
-is conceivable that in the present state of the world nations who bring
-forth many children and manufacture products in large quantities should
-seek territories and markets in far-off lands, and secure possession
-of them by stratagem and violence. How different it is in our own
-case! Our thrifty nation, careful not to have more children than the
-natal soil can feed without difficulty, and producing in a moderate
-degree, does not willingly embark on distant adventures; our France,
-who hardly goes beyond her garden wall, great heavens, what need has
-she of colonies? Of what use are they to her? What do they bring her?
-She has spent men and money in profusion, in order that the Congo,
-Cochin-China, Annam, Tonking, Guiana, and Madagascar shall purchase
-calicoes from Manchester, guns from Birmingham and Liége, brandies from
-Dantzig, and cases of wine all the way from Bordeaux to Hamburg. She
-has, for seventy years, despoiled,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_173" id="Page_173" title="173"> </a> hunted, and shot down Arabs, and in
-the end she has peopled Algeria with Italians and Spaniards!</p>
-
-<p>“The irony of these results is cruel enough, and it is hard to realise
-that this empire, ten or eleven times as big as France herself, has
-been formed to our detriment. But, it must be taken into consideration
-that whereas the French nation derives no advantage whatsoever from
-the possession of territories in Africa and Asia, the heads of its
-Government, on the other hand, find it to their great advantage to
-acquire them. They thereby secure the affection of the navy and army,
-which on the occasion of colonial expeditions reap a harvest of
-promotions, pensions, and crosses, to say nothing of the glory won in
-defeating the enemy. They conciliate the clergy by opening new paths
-to the Propaganda, and by allocating territories to Catholic missions.
-They make joyous the ship-owners, builders, and army contractors,
-whom they load with orders. They secure for themselves in the country
-itself a numerous following by the granting of concessions of immense
-forests and plantations without end. And, what is still more precious
-to them, they attach to their majority every parliamentary jobber
-and kerbstone-broker. Lastly, they cajole the multitude, proud in
-its possession of a yellow and black empire, which makes Germany and
-England turn green with envy. They are looked<a class="pagenum" name="Page_174" id="Page_174" title="174"> </a> upon as good citizens,
-patriots, and great statesmen. And if, like Ferry, they incur the
-risk of going under, as the result of some military disaster, they
-willingly run the risk fully convinced that the most harmful of distant
-expeditions will cost them fewer difficulties, and will inveigle them
-into fewer perils than the most useful of social reforms.</p>
-
-<p>“You can now realise why we have occasionally had imperialist
-ministers, jealous of aggrandising our colonial domain. We must
-congratulate ourselves, however, and praise the moderation of our
-rulers, who might have burdened us with still more colonies.</p>
-
-<p>“But all danger has not been averted, and we are threatened with an
-eighty years’ warfare in Morocco. Is there never to be an end to the
-colonial mania?</p>
-
-<p>“I am fully aware that nations are not sensible. How can it be
-expected of them, if one considers what they are made of? Still, a
-certain instinct oftentimes warns them of what is harmful. They are
-occasionally endowed with the power of observing. In the long run they
-undergo the painful experience of their errors and blunders. The day
-will come when it will dawn upon them that colonies are a source of
-perils and ruinous results. Commercial barbarism will be followed by
-commercial civilisation, and forcible, by pacific penetration.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_175" id="Page_175" title="175"> </a> These
-ideas have to-day found an echo even in the bosom of parliaments. They
-will prevail, not because men will be more disinterested, but because
-they will know their own interests better.</p>
-
-<p>“The great human asset is man himself. In order to rate the terrestrial
-globe, it is necessary to begin by rating men. To exploit the soil, the
-mines, the waters, all the substances and all the forces of our planet,
-it needs man, the whole of man; humanity, the whole of humanity. The
-complete exploitation of the terrestrial globe demands the united
-labour of white, yellow, and black men. By reducing, diminishing, and
-weakening, or, to sum it up in one word, by colonising a portion of
-humanity, we are working against ourselves. It is to our advantage
-that yellow and black men should be powerful, free, and wealthy. Our
-prosperity and our wealth depend on theirs. The more is produced, the
-more will there be consumed. The greater the profit they derive from
-us, the greater the profit we shall derive from them. If they reap the
-benefit of our labours, so shall we fully reap theirs.</p>
-
-<p>“If we study the movements which govern the destinies of societies, we
-may perhaps discover signs that the era of violent deeds is coming to
-an end. War, which was formerly a standing institution among nations,
-is now intermittent, and the periods of peace have become of longer
-duration than those<a class="pagenum" name="Page_176" id="Page_176" title="176"> </a> of war. Our country affords the observations of
-a fact full of interest, for the French nation presents an original
-characteristic in the military history of nations. Whereas other
-nations never waged war except from interest or necessity, alone the
-French have fought for the pleasure of fighting. Now it is remarkable
-that the taste of our compatriots has undergone a change. Thirty years
-ago Renan wrote: ‘Whoever knows France as a whole and in her provincial
-varieties will not hesitate to recognise the fact that the movement
-swaying this country for the past fifty years is essentially pacific.’
-It is a fact attested by a large number of observers that in 1870
-France had no desire to have recourse to the arbitrament of war, and
-that the declaration of war was greeted with consternation. It is an
-assured fact that few Frenchmen dream of taking the field, and that
-everybody readily accepts the idea that the army exists in order to
-avoid a war. Let me quote one example out of a thousand in confirmation
-of this state of mind. Monsieur Ribot, a representative of the people
-and a former Cabinet Minister, having been invited to some patriotic
-celebration, replied with an eloquent letter, begging to be excused.
-The same Monsieur Ribot knits his brows superciliously at the mere
-mention of the word disarmament. He has towards standards and cannon
-the leaning<a class="pagenum" name="Page_177" id="Page_177" title="177"> </a> proper to a former Minister of Foreign Affairs. In his
-letter he denounces as a national peril the pacific ideas disseminated
-by the Socialist. He sees in them a spirit of renunciation he cannot
-endure. Not that he is of a bellicose turn of mind. He, too, sighs
-for peace, but a peace full of pomp, magnificent, and flashing with
-the same pride as war. Between Monsieur Ribot and Jaurès, the matter
-is merely one of form. Both of them are for peace. Jaurès, simply;
-Monsieur Ribot, superbly. That is all. Better still and more surely
-than the Socialist democracy which contents itself with a bloused or
-coated peace does the sentiment of the bourgeois, who demand a peace
-gleaming with military insignia and bedecked with emblems of glory,
-testify to the inevitable decline of all idea of revenge and conquests,
-since one discerns in it the military instinct, at the very time when
-it is losing its nature and is becoming pacific.</p>
-
-<p>“France is acquiring by degrees the sentiment of her true strength,
-consisting in intellectual strength; she is becoming conscious of her
-mission, which is the sowing of ideas and the exercise of a sway over
-thought. She will within measurable time perceive that her only stable
-power has lain in her speakers, her writers, and her men of science.
-Hence she will some day fain have to recognise that the force of
-numbers, after having so often betrayed her, is<a class="pagenum" name="Page_178" id="Page_178" title="178"> </a> finally escaping from
-her, and that the time has come for her to resign herself to the glory
-which the exercise of the mind and the use of reason assure her of.”</p>
-
-<p>Jean Boilly, shaking his head, said:</p>
-
-<p>“You ask that France should teach other nations concord and peace. Are
-you so sure that she will be listened to and her example followed?
-Is her own tranquillity so assured? Has she not to fear threats from
-outside, to foresee dangers, to watch over her safety, and to provide
-for her defence? One swallow does not make a summer; one nation does
-not make the peace of the world. Is it so sure that Germany keeps up
-an army with the sole object of not waging war? Her Social-Democrats
-desire peace. But they are not the masters, and their deputies do
-not enjoy in the Parliament the authority which the number of their
-electors should give them. And Russia, who has hardly entered upon the
-industrial period, do you believe that she will soon be entering upon
-the pacific period? Is it not to be feared that after having disturbed
-Asia she will disturb Europe?</p>
-
-<p>“Supposing even that Europe should become pacific, can you not see
-that America would become warlike? Following upon Cuba, reduced to the
-state of a vassal republic, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the annexation of
-the Philippines, it is impossible<a class="pagenum" name="Page_179" id="Page_179" title="179"> </a> to say that the American Union is
-not a conquering nation. A publicist of Yankee proclivities, Stead,
-has said amid the plaudits of the whole of the United States: ‘The
-Americanisation of the world is on the march.’ And then there is Mr.
-Roosevelt, whose dream is to plant the Stars and Stripes in South
-Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. Mr. Roosevelt is Imperialist
-and he sighs for an America mistress of the world. Between ourselves,
-he is planning the Empire of Augustus. He has unfortunately perused
-Livy. The conquests of the Romans banish sleep from him. Have you read
-his speeches? They breathe a bellicose spirit. ‘Fight, my friends,’
-says Mr. Roosevelt, ‘and fight hard. There is nothing like blows. We
-are upon earth only to exterminate one another. Those who tell you the
-contrary are men without morality. Mistrust men who think. Thought
-enervates. ’Tis a French failing. The Romans conquered the world. They
-lost it. We are the modern Romans.’ Words full of eloquence, backed
-up with a navy which will soon be the second in the world, and with a
-military Budget of 40,500,000 francs!</p>
-
-<p>“The Yankees declare that in four years’ time they will fight Germany.
-If we are to believe this, they should first tell us where they
-expect to come into contact with the enemy. That a Russia, the serf
-of her Czar, that a still feudal Germany, should<a class="pagenum" name="Page_180" id="Page_180" title="180"> </a> entertain armies
-for fighting purposes, this one is tempted to lay to the door of
-ancient habits and the survival of a strenuous past. But that a young
-democracy, the United States of America, an aggregation of business
-men, a mass of emigrants from all countries, lacking community,
-traditions, and memories, madly cast into the scramble for the
-mighty dollar, should of a sudden be swept with the desire of firing
-torpedoes at the flanks of battleships, and of exploding mines under
-the enemy’s columns, affords a proof that the inordinate struggle for
-the production and exploitation of riches keeps alive the employment
-of and taste for brutal force, that industrial violence engenders
-military violence, and that mercantile rivalries kindle between nations
-hatreds that bloodshed can alone extinguish. The colonial mania of
-which you were speaking a while ago is but one of the thousand forms
-of the much-vaunted competition of our economists. The capitalistic
-state is just as much a warlike one as the feudal. The era has dawned
-of great wars for the industrial sovereignty. Under the present
-<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i> of national production it is the cannon which fixes tariffs,
-establishes customs, opens and closes markets. There exists no other
-regulator of commerce and industry. Extermination is the fatal result
-of the economic conditions in which the civilised world finds itself
-to-day....”</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_181" id="Page_181" title="181"> </a>
-The perfume of Gorgonzola and Stracchino was pervading the table. The
-waiter was bringing in wax-candles to each of which was attached the
-<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">abbrustolatoio</i><a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> wherewith to light the long cigars with straws, so
-dear to Italians.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p class="label">
-<a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_8">[H]</a>
-<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Abbrustolatoio</i>&mdash;apparatus attached to the candle; it has
-two rings through which the cigar is placed, and left to burn awhile.</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Hippolyte Dufresne, who for some time past seemed to have remained
-indifferent to the conversation, here remarked in a low tone tinged
-with an ostentatious modesty:</p>
-
-<p>“Gentlemen, our friend Langelier was asserting just now that many men
-are afraid of disgracing themselves in the eyes of their contemporaries
-by assuming the horrible immorality which is to be the morality of the
-future. I do not entertain a like fear, and I have written a little
-tale, which has perhaps no other merit than the one of revealing my
-calmness of mind when considering the future. I shall one day crave
-permission to read it to you.”</p>
-
-<p>“Read it right away,” said Boni, lighting his cigar.</p>
-
-<p>“You will be giving us pleasure,” added Joséphin Leclerc, Nicole
-Langelier, and M. Goubin.</p>
-
-<p>“I am not sure whether I have the manuscript with me,” replied
-Hippolyte Dufresne.</p>
-
-<p>With these words, he drew out of his pocket a roll of paper, and began
-to read what follows.</p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_182" id="Page_182" title="182"> </a></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_183" id="Page_183" title="183"> </a>
-<a name="v" id="v"></a>V<br />
-
-THROUGH THE HORN OR THE IVORY GATE</h2>
-
-
-<div class="width80">
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-i_drop.jpg" width="80" height="87" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="uppercase">“It</span> was about one o’clock in the morning. Before retiring for the
-night, I opened the window and lit a cigarette. The hum of a motor-car
-scudding along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne broke the reigning
-silence. The trees were freshening the atmosphere by the swaying of
-their darkened tops. No buzzing insect, no living sound arose from
-the sterile soil of the city. The night was resplendent with stars.
-Their fires seemed, in the clearness of the air, more so than on other
-nights, of varied lines. The greater number blazed at white heat. Some
-there were, however, yellow and orange-tinted, similar to the flames
-of dying lamps. Several were blue, and I saw one of so pale a blue, so
-limpid, and so soft, that I could not avert my gaze from it. I regret
-being ignorant of its name, but I console myself with the thought that
-men do not give the stars their true names.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_184" id="Page_184" title="184"> </a>
-“When I reflect that each one of these drops of light enlightens
-worlds, I ask myself whether, like our own sun, they do not shed their
-rays on sufferings without end, and whether pain does not penetrate the
-utmost recesses of heaven. We can only judge the other worlds by our
-own. We know of life only the forms which it assumes upon the earth,
-and if we suppose that our planet is one of the least good, we have
-no reason for believing that all goes rightly in the others, nor that
-fortunate is he who is born under the rays of Altair, Betelgeux, or
-the fiery Sirius, when we know what a grievous affair it is to open
-our eyes on earth to the light of our old Sun. It is not that I find
-mine an unhappy fate, when compared with that of other men. I am not
-troubled with either wife or child. Love and sickness have left me
-unscathed. I am not very rich, and I do not go into society. I am thus
-to be numbered with the happy ones. Little joy, however, falls to their
-lot. What, then, can be the fate of the others? Men are really to be
-pitied. I impute no blame to nature for this; to hold a conversation
-with her is an impossibility; she is not intelligent. Nor will I lay
-the blame on society. There is no sense in opposing society to nature.
-It <a name="is" id="is"></a><ins title="Original has it">is</ins> as absurd to oppose the nature of men to the society of
-men, as to oppose the nature of ants to the society of ants, or the
-nature of herrings to the society of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_185" id="Page_185" title="185"> </a> herrings. Animal societies
-are the necessary outcome of animal nature. The earth is the planet
-where one eats; ’tis the planet of hunger. The animals peopling it
-are naturally gluttonous and ferocious. Man, the most intelligent of
-them all, is alone avaricious. Avarice has so far been the fundamental
-virtue of human societies, and the moral masterpiece of nature. Were
-I a writer, I should indite the praise of avarice. It is true that my
-book would not reveal anything strikingly new. The subject has been
-dealt with a hundred times over by moralists and economists. Human
-societies have avarice and cruelty as their august basis.</p>
-
-<p>“It is thus in the other universes, in the numberless ethereal worlds?
-Do all the stars I see shed their light on men? Do people eat and
-inter-devour one another beyond the infinite. This doubt troubles me,
-and I am unable to contemplate without fright the fiery dew suspended
-in the heavens.</p>
-
-<p>“My thoughts imperceptibly become more lucid and gentle, and the idea
-of life, in its sensuality, violent and suave in turn, once more
-assumes a pleasurable aspect to my mind. I sometimes say to myself that
-life is beautiful. For, without such beauty, how could we discern its
-ugly features, and how believe that nature is bad, if at the same time
-we do not believe that it is good?</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_186" id="Page_186" title="186"> </a>
-“For a few minutes past, the phrases of a sonata of Mozart have hovered
-in the air, with their white columns and their garlands of roses. My
-neighbour is a pianist, who at nights plays Mozart and Gluck. I close
-the window, and while undressing, I am pondering over the doubtful
-pleasures which I may give myself the next day, when of a sudden I
-remember that for a week past I have been invited to lunch in the Bois
-de Boulogne; I have a vague idea that the invitation is for the coming
-day. To make sure of it, I look up the letter of invitation, which lies
-open on my table. Its contents are:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-<p class="right nmb">“‘16th September 1903.</p>
-
-<p class="noi nmt nmb">“‘My dear old Dufresne,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="indent2em nmt">“‘Do me the pleasure of coming to luncheon with ... etc. etc.,
-next Saturday, the 23rd of September, 1903, etc. etc.’</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>“It is for to-morrow.</p>
-
-<p>“I ring for my valet.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Jean, wake me to-morrow at nine o’clock.’</p>
-
-<p>“It happens precisely that to-morrow, the 23rd of September 1903,
-I shall enter upon my fortieth year. From what I have already seen
-in this world I can almost conceive what still remains for me to be
-seen. I can safely foretell the topics of to-morrow’s conversation
-at the restaurant in the Bois: ‘My automobile goes sixty kilomètres
-an hour.’&mdash;‘Blanche<a class="pagenum" name="Page_187" id="Page_187" title="187"> </a> has a nasty disposition; but she is true to me;
-of that I feel sure.’&mdash;‘The Cabinet takes its pass-word from the
-Socialists.’&mdash;‘In the long run, the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">petits-chevaux</i> are a bore.
-However, there remains <i>baccara</i>.’&mdash;‘The workmen would be fools not to
-do as they please: the government always gives in to them.’&mdash;‘I will
-bet you that Epingle-d’Or will beat Ranavalo.’&mdash;‘What I personally
-cannot make out is why there is not some General to sweep away all
-those blackguards.’&mdash;‘What can you expect? France has been sold to
-England and Germany by the Jews.’ This is what I shall hear to-morrow.
-Here you have the social and political ideas of my friends, the
-great-grandsons of the bourgeois of July, princes of the factory and
-foundry, kings of the mine, who knew the way of mastering and enslaving
-the forces of the Revolution. My friends do not seem to me capable
-of preserving for any lengthy period the industrial empire and the
-political power bequeathed to them by their ancestors. My friends do
-not shine by their intelligence. They have not indulged in too much
-brainwork. No more have I. So far, I have not done much in this life.
-Like them, I am both idle and ignorant. I do not feel myself capable of
-achieving anything, and if I do not possess their vanity, if my brain
-is not stored with all the foolish ideas encumbering theirs; if, like
-them, I do not feel a hatred for and a fear of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_188" id="Page_188" title="188"> </a> ideas, it is due to a
-peculiar circumstance of my life. My father, a big manufacturer and
-Conservative deputy, gave me, when I was seventeen, a young and timid
-“coach,” who spoke little, and who looked like a girl. While preparing
-me for my bachelorship, he was organising the social revolution in
-Europe. His gentleness was something refreshing. He has often been
-put in prison, and is now a deputy. I used to copy his addresses to
-the international proletariat. He made me read the whole Socialistic
-library. He taught me things all of which were not to be credited, but
-he opened my eyes to what was going on about me; he demonstrated to me
-that everything our society honours is contemptible, and that all that
-it despises is worthy of esteem. He led me into the paths of rebellion.
-In spite of his demonstrations, I came to the conclusion that falsehood
-should be respected and hypocrisy venerated as the two surest supports
-of the public order. I remained a Conservative, but my soul became
-saturated with disgust.</p>
-
-<p>“As I am falling asleep, a few almost imperceptible phrases of Mozart
-still reach my ears now and then, and make me dream of temples of
-marble standing amid a blue foliage.</p>
-
-<p>“It was broad daylight when I awoke. I dressed myself much more quickly
-than it is my wont. Unconscious of the cause for this haste, I found
-myself<a class="pagenum" name="Page_189" id="Page_189" title="189"> </a> in the street without knowing how I had got there. What I now
-saw about me was to me the cause of a surprise which suspended all
-my faculties of reflection; and it is owing to this impossibility to
-reflect that my surprise did not increase, but remained stationary and
-calm. It would doubtless soon have become immoderate, and would have
-changed to stupor and terror, had I retained the use of my mind, so
-greatly was the scene which I was witnessing different from what it
-should be. Everything about me was to me new, unknown, and foreign.
-The trees and the lawns which I was in the habit of seeing daily had
-vanished. Where, on the day before, the tall grey buildings of the
-avenue stood out against the sky, there now stretched a fanciful line
-of brick cottages surrounded by gardens. I dared not look round to
-ascertain whether my own house still existed, and so I went straight
-towards the Porte Dauphine. I found it not. I took a street which was,
-so it seemed to me, the old road to Suresnes. The houses flanking it,
-of strange style and new form, too small to be occupied by rich people,
-were nevertheless embellished with pictures, sculptures, and brilliant
-potteries. A covered terrace surmounted them. I followed this rural
-road, whose curves produced enchanting perspectives. It was crossed
-obliquely by other sinuous ways. Neither trains, nor automobiles,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_190" id="Page_190" title="190"> </a> nor
-vehicles of any kind went by. Shadows flitted over the soil. I looked
-upwards and saw masses of huge birds and enormous fishes glide rapidly
-through the upper atmosphere, which seemed to be a combination of
-heaven and ocean. Near the Seine, the course of which was altered, I
-came across a crowd of men clad in short blouses knotted at the waist,
-and wearing long gaiters. To all appearance they were in their working
-clothes. But their gait was lighter and more elegant than that of our
-workmen. I noticed women among them. What had heretofore prevented my
-recognising them as such was that they were dressed like the men, that
-they had long and straight legs, and, so it seemed to me, the narrow
-hips of American women. Although these folk did not present a savage
-appearance, I looked at them with fright. They presented to my gaze a
-more foreign appearance than any of the numerous strangers I had so
-far met upon the earth. In order to avoid seeing another human face,
-I turned down a deserted lane. Very soon I came to a circus planted
-with masts from which flew crimson oriflammes bearing in letters of
-gold the words: <span class="smcap">European Federation</span>. Placards in large frames
-ornamented with emblems of peace hung at the foot of the masts. They
-embodied announcements regarding popular festivals, legal injunctions,
-and works of public interest. In addition to balloon time-tables was
-a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_191" id="Page_191" title="191"> </a> chart of the atmospheric currents drawn on the 28th of June of the
-year 220 of the Federation of Nations. All these texts were printed in
-characters new to me, and in a language of which I did not understand
-all the words. The while I was attempting to decipher them, the
-shadows of the countless machines cleaving the air flitted across my
-vision. Once more did I gaze upwards, and in this sky altered beyond
-recognition, more densely populated than the earth, cloven by rudders
-and threshed by screws, towards which a circle of smoke rose from the
-horizon, I perceived the sun. I felt like crying on seeing it. It was
-the only familiar figure which I had come across since morning. From
-its altitude I judged that it was about ten o’clock of the forenoon.
-Of a sudden I was surrounded by a second crowd of men and women,
-similar in appearance and in costume to the first. I was confirmed in
-the impression that the women, although some of them were very plump,
-others very skinny, and many beggared description, were on the whole
-<a name="androgynous" id="androgynous"></a><ins title="Original has androginous">androgynous</ins> in appearance. The crowd went its way.
-The open space once more was desert, just as our suburban quarters,
-which only come to life on the exodus from the workshops. I remained
-behind in front of the placards and read once more the date&mdash;the
-28th of June of the year 220 of the European Federation. What did it
-mean! A proclamation by the Federal Committee, on<a class="pagenum" name="Page_192" id="Page_192" title="192"> </a> the occasion of
-the festival of the Earth, furnished me with timely and useful data
-for comprehension of that date. This is what I read: ‘Comrades, you
-are aware how, in the last year of the twentieth century, the old
-order collapsed in a fearful cataclysm, and how, after fifty years of
-anarchy, the federation of the peoples of Europe was organised....”
-The year 220 of the federation of peoples was therefore the year 2270
-of the Christian Era; this was certainly a fact which remained to be
-explained. How came it that of a sudden I found myself transported to
-the year 2270?</p>
-
-<p>“I mused over the circumstance as I strolled at haphazard.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I have not, as far as I know,’ I said to myself, ‘been preserved
-for so many years in the mummy state, like Colonel Fougas. I have
-not driven the machine with which Mr. H. G. Wells explores time. And
-if, following the example of William Morris, I have, while asleep,
-skipped three and a half centuries, I am unaware of the fact, since,
-when dreaming, one does not know that one is doing so. I am utterly
-convinced that I am not asleep.’</p>
-
-<p>“While indulging in these musings and others not worth recording,
-I was following a long street bordered with railings behind which
-pink-hued houses of various styles, but all equally small, smilingly
-peeped through the foliage. At times I<a class="pagenum" name="Page_193" id="Page_193" title="193"> </a> perceived huge circuses of
-steel standing out in the landscape, and crowned with flames and
-smoke. Terror planed over these regions to which no name can be
-given, while the vibrating rush of air caused by the rapid flight of
-the machines resounded painfully through my brain. The street led to
-a meadow studded with clumps of trees and intersected by rivulets.
-Cows were pasturing in it. Just as my eyes were feasting upon the
-freshness of the scene I fancied I saw in front of me shadows flitting
-along a smooth and straight road. The whirlwind engendered by them,
-as they passed me, fanned my cheeks. I saw that they were trams and
-automobiles, real transparencies in their rapidity.</p>
-
-<p>“I crossed the road by a foot-bridge, and for a long time I sauntered
-through small meadows and woodlands. I thought I was in the open
-country, when I discovered an extensive frontage of resplendent
-houses bordering on the park. Soon, I found myself opposite a palace
-of an airy style of architecture. A sculptured and painted frieze,
-representing a largely attended feast, stretched across the vast
-façade. I perceived, through the panes of the bay-windows, men and
-women seated in a large and bright room around long marble tables,
-laden with prettily painted potteries. I entered, under the impression
-that this was a restaurant. I was not hungry, but weary, and the
-coolness of the room,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_194" id="Page_194" title="194"> </a> artistically hung with garlands of fruit,
-appeared to me delicious. A man who stood by the door asked me for my
-voucher, and, as I showed embarrassment, he remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“‘I see, comrade, that you are not of these parts. How is it that you
-are travelling without vouchers! Very sorry, but it is impossible for
-me to admit you. Go and seek the delegate who hires journeymen; or, if
-you are too weak to work, address yourself to the delegate who attends
-to those who need succour.’</p>
-
-<p>“I informed him that I was nowise unfit for work, and drew away. A
-stout fellow, who was picking his teeth, said to me obligingly:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Comrade, you need not go to the delegate who engages journeymen. I am
-the delegate attached to the bakery of the section. We are one comrade
-short. Come along with me. You shall be put to work at once.’</p>
-
-<p>“I thanked the corpulent comrade, assured him of my willingness,
-pointing out, however, that I was not a baker.</p>
-
-<p>“He looked at me with some surprise, and told me that he could see I
-enjoyed a joke.</p>
-
-<p>“I followed him. We stopped in front of an immense cast-iron building
-having a monumental gateway, on the pediment of which a couple of
-bronze giants were resting on their elbows&mdash;the Sower and the Reaper.
-Their bodies expressed<a class="pagenum" name="Page_195" id="Page_195" title="195"> </a> strength unstrained. A calm pride irradiated
-their faces, and they carried high their heads; in this, greatly
-dissimilar to the fierce-looking workers of the Flemish Constantin
-Meunier. We entered a room forty mètres in height, wherein, amid clouds
-of a light whitish dust, machinery was working with a sonorous and calm
-hum. Under the metallic dome, bags tendered themselves spontaneously
-to the knife which disembowelled them; the flour which escaped from
-them dropped into troughs where powerful hands of steel kneaded it
-into dough which flowed into moulds, which when full hastened to put
-themselves of their own accord into an oven as capacious and deep as
-a tunnel. Five or six men at most, motionless amid all this motion,
-supervised the labour of the machinery.</p>
-
-<p>“‘’Tis an old bakery,’ said my companion. ‘It hardly produces more than
-eighty thousand loaves a day, and its too weak machines employ too many
-hands. It matters little. Come up to the place where the goods arrive.’</p>
-
-<p>“I did not have the time to ask for a more explicit command. A lift
-had deposited me on the platform. Hardly had I reached it, when a kind
-of flying whale alighted close to me and unloaded a number of sacks.
-No human being was aboard this machine. Other flying whales brought
-more sacks which they unloaded, and which offered themselves<a class="pagenum" name="Page_196" id="Page_196" title="196"> </a> up in
-succession to the knife which ripped them open. The screws revolved,
-and the rudder did its work. There was no one at the helm, nobody
-aboard the machine. I could hear in the distance the slight hum of
-a wasp flying, and then the thing grew with astounding rapidity. It
-seemed quite sure of itself, but my ignorance as to what would happen,
-should it perchance go wrong, caused me to shudder. I was several times
-tempted to ask to be allowed to go down again. A false shame prevented
-me. I stood my ground. The sun was disappearing on the horizon, and it
-was about five o’clock when the lift came up for me. The day’s work was
-over. I was given a voucher for board and lodging.</p>
-
-<p>“The rotund comrade remarked to me:</p>
-
-<p>“‘You must be hungry. You may, if you wish, take your evening meal at
-the public table. If you prefer eating by yourself in your own room,
-you may likewise do so. If you prefer supping at my place, together
-with a few comrades, say so at once. I am going to telephone to the
-culinary workshop that your rations be sent to you. I am telling you
-all this in order to set you at ease, for you seem like a fish out of
-water. You have no doubt come from afar. You do not look as if you
-could take care of yourself. To-day, your task has been an easy one.
-Do not, however, imagine that one’s livelihood is earned every day as
-cheaply as that. If the <span class="hidehand">Ƶ</span><span class="hidehtml">Z</span>-rays which directed the balloons had worked<a class="pagenum" name="Page_197" id="Page_197" title="197"> </a>
-badly, as will sometimes happen, your task would not have been so easy.
-What is your particular line, and where do you come from?’</p>
-
-<p>“These questions embarrassed me greatly. I could not tell him the
-truth. I could not inform him that I was a bourgeois, and that I had
-come from the twentieth century. He would have thought me crazy. I
-replied in a vague and embarrassed manner that I had no trade, and that
-I came from far, from very far.</p>
-
-<p>“He smiled, and said:</p>
-
-<p>“‘I understand. You dare not admit it. You come from the United States
-of Africa. You are not the only European who has thus given us the
-slip. But nearly all these deserters end by coming back to us.’</p>
-
-<p>“I answered not a word, and my silence led him to believe that he had
-guessed aright. He renewed his invitation to supper, and asked me my
-name. I informed him that I was known as Hippolyte Dufresne. He seemed
-surprised at my having two names.</p>
-
-<p>“‘My name is Michel,’ he said.</p>
-
-<p>“Then, after a minute inspection of my straw hat, my jacket, my shoes,
-and the rest of my costume, which was no doubt somewhat dusty, but of a
-good cut, for after all I do not have my clothes made by a tailor who
-acts as hall-porter in the Rue des Acacias, he continued:</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_198" id="Page_198" title="198"> </a>
-“‘Hippolyte, I see whence you have come. You have lived in the black
-provinces. Nowadays there are only Zulus and Basutos to weave cloth so
-badly, to give so grotesque a shape to a suit, to make such ill-shapen
-footgear, and to stiffen linen with starch. It is only among them that
-you can have learnt to shave off your beard, while preserving on your
-face a moustache, and two little whiskers. This custom of scissoring
-the hair of the face, so as to form figures and ornaments, is the last
-word of tattooing, nowadays in vogue only among the Basutos and Zulus.
-These black provinces of the United States of Africa are wallowing in a
-state of barbarism resembling in many aspects the state of France three
-or four hundred years ago.’</p>
-
-<p>“I accepted Michel’s invitation.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I live quite close to here, in Sologne,’ he said. ‘My aeroplane scuds
-along fairly well. We shall soon be there.’</p>
-
-<p>“He made me take a seat under the belly of a huge mechanical bird, and
-we were soon cleaving the air so rapidly that I lost breath. The aspect
-of the countryside was vastly different from the one known to me. All
-the roads were bordered with houses; countless canals intersected the
-fields with their silvery lines. As I sat wrapt in admiration, Michel
-remarked to me:</p>
-
-<p>“‘The land is fairly well exploited, and cultivation<a class="pagenum" name="Page_199" id="Page_199" title="199"> </a> is “intense,” as
-they say, since chemists are themselves agriculturists. One has tried
-one’s best, and one has worked hard for the past three hundred years.
-The fact is that to make collectivism a reality it has been necessary
-to compel the soil to return four or five times more than it returned
-in the days of capitalistic anarchy. You, who have lived among the
-Zulus and Basutos, are aware that the necessaries of life are so scarce
-with them that were they to be divided among all it would amount to
-sharing poverty and not wealth. The super-abundant production which
-we have attained to is more especially due to the progress made by
-science. The almost total suppression of the urban classes has also
-been of great advantage to agriculture. The shopkeepers and the clerks
-have gone, some to the factory, others to the field.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘You have suppressed the cities! What has become
-of Paris?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Hardly any one lives there now,’ replied Michel. ‘The greater part
-of those hideous and insanitary five-storied houses, wherein dwelt
-the citizens of the closed era, have fallen in ruins, and have been
-suffered to remain in that condition. House-building was very poor in
-the twentieth century of that unhappy era. We have preserved some of
-the older and better constructed buildings and converted them into
-museums. We possess a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_200" id="Page_200" title="200"> </a> large number of museums and libraries: it is
-there we seek instruction. We have also kept a portion of the remains
-of the Hôtel de Ville. It was an ugly and fragile building, but great
-things were carried out within its precincts. As we no longer have
-tribunals, commerce, and armies, we no longer have cities, so to
-speak. Nevertheless, the density of the population is much greater on
-certain points than on others, and in spite of the rapidity of means of
-communication, the mining and metallurgic centres are densely peopled.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘What is that you say?’ I asked him. ‘You have done away with the
-courts of law? Have you then suppressed crime and misdemeanour?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Crime will last as long as old and gloomy humanity. But, the number
-of criminals has diminished with the number of the wretched. The
-suburbs of the great cities were the feeding-grounds of crime; we no
-longer have big cities. The wireless telephone makes the highways safe
-day and night. We are all provided with electric means of defence.
-As to misdemeanours, they were rather the result of the scruples of
-the judges than of the perversity of the accused. Now that we no
-longer possess lawyers and judges, and that justice is administered by
-citizens summoned in rotation, many misdemeanours have disappeared,
-doubtless because it is impossible to recognise them as such.’</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_201" id="Page_201" title="201"> </a>
-“In this fashion did Michel discourse while steering his aeroplane. I
-am recording the meaning of his words as exactly as I can. I regret my
-inability, owing to a lack of memory, and also from fear of not making
-myself understood, to reproduce his language in all its expressiveness
-and its movement. The baker and his contemporaries spoke a language
-astonishing me at first by the novelty of its vocabulary and syntax,
-and especially by its pithy and flowing construction.</p>
-
-<p>“Michel came to ground on the terrace of a modest but pleasing dwelling.</p>
-
-<p>“‘We have arrived,’ he said; ‘’tis here that I live. You will sup with
-comrades who, like myself, take an interest in statistics.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘What! You a statistician! I thought you were a baker.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I am a baker, six hours of the day. This is the duration of the day’s
-work as determined for nearly a century by the Federal Committee. The
-rest of the time I give up to statistical labours. It is the science
-which has stepped into history’s shoes. The historians of old related
-the brilliant deeds of the few. Ours register all that is produced and
-<a name="fullstop" id="fullstop"></a><ins title="Original has question mark">consumed.</ins>’</p>
-
-<p>“After having conducted me to a hydrotherapic closet established on
-the roof, Michel led me down-stairs to the dining-room lit up by
-electricity,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_202" id="Page_202" title="202"> </a> entirely white, and ornamented only with a sculptured
-frieze of strawberry plants in bloom. A table in painted pottery was
-covered with dishes with a metallic glaze. Three persons sat at it.
-Michel named them to me.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Morin, Perceval, Chéron.’</p>
-
-<p>“These three individuals were all clad alike in rough-spun jackets,
-velvet breeches, and grey stockings. Morin wore a long white beard;
-Chéron’s and Perceval’s faces were callow. Their short hair and more
-especially the frankness of their looks gave them the appearance of
-young lads. Yet I felt sure that they were women. Perceval seemed to me
-rather pretty, although she was no longer very young. I thought Chéron
-altogether charming. Michel introduced me:</p>
-
-<p>“‘I have brought comrade Hippolyte, who also calls himself Dufresne, to
-meet you; he has lived among the half-breeds, in the black provinces
-of the United States of Africa. He could not get any dinner at eleven
-o’clock, and so he must have an appetite.’</p>
-
-<p>“I was indeed hungry. They helped me to tiny bits of food cut into
-squares, which were not unpleasant to the taste, however new to me. A
-variety of cheeses were on the table. Morin poured me out a glass of
-light beer, and informed me that I could drink to my heart’s content,
-as it did not contain any alcohol.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_203" id="Page_203" title="203"> </a>
-“‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I am glad to see that you pay attention to
-the evils of alcohol.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘They have almost ceased to exist,’ answered Morin. ‘We succeeded in
-suppressing alcoholism before the end of the closed era. It would have
-otherwise been impossible to establish the new <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i>. An alcoholic
-proletariat is incapable of emancipation.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Have you not also,’ I inquired, while tasting a strangely carved bit
-of food&mdash;‘have you not also perfected food?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Comrade,’ replied Perceval, ‘you doubtless refer to chemical
-alimentation. So far, it has not made any great strides. ’Tis in
-vain that we send our chemists as delegates into the kitchen....
-Their tabloids are of no good. With the exception that we know how
-to compound properly caloric and nutritious foods, we feed almost as
-coarsely as the men of the closed era, and we enjoy it just as much.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Our scientists,’ remarked Michel, ‘are seeking to establish a
-rational system of food.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘That’s childishness,’ said the young female Chéron. ‘No good result
-will be reached, as long as the big intestine, a useless and harmful
-organ, and the seat of microbian infection, has not been removed....
-This will come in time.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘In what way?’ I asked.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_204" id="Page_204" title="204"> </a>
-“‘Simply by ablation. And this suppression, the result, in the first
-place, of an operation upon a sufficient number of individuals, will
-tend to establish itself by heredity, and will later on be common to
-the whole race.’</p>
-
-<p>“These people treated me humanely and conversed obligingly with me. But
-it was difficult for me to chime in with their manners and their ideas,
-while I noticed that I nowise interested them, and that they felt an
-absolute indifference towards my modes of thought. The more I showed
-them courtesies, the more I alienated their sympathies. Following
-upon my addressing a few compliments, albeit discreet and sincere, to
-Chéron, she no longer even deigned to look at me.</p>
-
-<p>“The meal over, addressing myself to Morin, who seemed to me
-intelligent and gentle, I said to him with a sincerity which indeed
-stirred me deeply:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Monsieur Morin, I am ignorant of all things, and I am suffering
-cruelly because of my lack of knowledge. I repeat to you that I come
-from far, from very far. Tell me, I entreat you, how the European
-Federation came into existence, and explain to me the present social
-system.’</p>
-
-<p>“Old Morin protested:</p>
-
-<p>“‘You are asking me for the history of three centuries. It would take
-me weeks, nay months.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_205" id="Page_205" title="205"> </a> Moreover, there are many things I could not
-teach you, as I do not know them myself.’</p>
-
-<p>“I thereupon entreated him to lay before me a very concise summary, as
-is done in the case of school children.</p>
-
-<p>“Morin, flinging himself back in his arm-chair, began:</p>
-
-<p>“‘To ascertain how the present society was constituted, it is necessary
-to go back far into the past.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The crowning achievement of the twentieth century was the extinction
-of war.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The arbitration Congress of The Hague, instituted in the middle of
-barbarism, did not to any degree contribute towards the maintenance of
-peace. But another more efficacious institution came into existence at
-that time. Groups of deputies were formed in the various Parliaments,
-who entered into communication with one another, and who in course of
-time came to deliberate in common on international questions. Giving
-expression as they did to the peaceful aspirations of a growing crowd
-of electors, their resolutions carried great weight, and supplied food
-for reflection to the governments, the most absolute of which, if one
-sets aside Russia, had at that time learnt to reckon with popular
-sentiment. What surprises us nowadays is that no one discerned in
-those meetings of deputies come<a class="pagenum" name="Page_206" id="Page_206" title="206"> </a> together from all countries the first
-attempt at an international parliament.</p>
-
-<p>“‘But then the party of violence was still powerful in the several
-empires, and even in the French Republic. And if the danger of the
-old-time dynastic and diplomatic wars determined upon at a green-baized
-table for the purpose of maintaining what was known as the European
-equilibrium was averted for all time, it was still to be dreaded,
-considering the unsatisfactory industrial condition affecting Europe,
-that the conflicting industrial interests might bring about some
-terrible conflagration.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The imperfectly organised proletariat, as yet without the
-consciousness of its strength, did not put an end to armed struggles
-between nations, but it limited their frequency and duration.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The last wars were the outcome of that mad fury of the old world
-known as the colonial policy. English, Russians, Germans, French, and
-Americans joined in rabid competition, in Asia and Africa, for the
-possession of zones of influence, as they said, wherein they could, on
-the basis of pillage and massacres, establish economic relations with
-the aborigines. They destroyed everything they could destroy in those
-two countries. Then followed the inevitable. The impoverished colonies
-which were expensive were retained and the prosperous ones lost. But
-mankind had to reckon, in Asia, with<a class="pagenum" name="Page_207" id="Page_207" title="207"> </a> a small heroic nation, taught
-by Europe, which made itself respected by her. By so doing, Japan, in
-barbarous times, rendered a great service to humanity.</p>
-
-<p>“‘When at last that detestable period of colonisation came to an end,
-no further was there any war. Still the States continued keeping up
-armies.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Having so far explained matters, I shall proceed to lay before you,
-pursuant to your request, the origins of present-day society. It
-issued from the one preceding it. In moral just as in individual life
-forms generate one another. Capitalistic naturally enough produced
-collectivist society. At the commencement of the twentieth century
-of the closed era, a memorable industrial evolution took place. The
-slender production of small artisans whose all were their tools was
-followed by a great production financially supported by a new agent of
-marvellous power&mdash;capital. Here was a great social progress.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘What was a great social step in advance?’ I asked.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The capitalistic <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i>,’ replied Morin. ‘It brought humanity an
-untold source of wealth. By grouping the workers in considerable masses
-and multiplying their numbers it created the proletariat. By making the
-workers an immense State within the State it paved the way for their
-emancipation, and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_208" id="Page_208" title="208"> </a> furnished them with the means of conquering power.</p>
-
-<p>“‘This <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i>, however, which was to be productive of such happy
-results in the future, was execrated by the workers, in whose ranks it
-made countless victims.</p>
-
-<p>“‘There exists no social benefit which has not been purchased at the
-cost of blood and tears. Moreover, this <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i> which had enriched the
-whole world came within an ace of ruining it. After having increased
-production to a considerable extent, it failed in its endeavours to
-regulate it, and struggled hopelessly in the toils of inextricable
-difficulties.</p>
-
-<p>“‘You are not totally ignorant, comrade, of the economic disturbances
-which filled the twentieth century. During the last hundred years
-of the capitalistic domination, the disorder of production and the
-delirium of competition piled up disasters high. The capitalists and
-the masters vainly attempted, by means of gigantic combinations, to
-regulate production and to annihilate competition. Their ill-conceived
-undertakings were engulfed in an abyss of gigantic catastrophes.
-During those anarchical days, the fight between classes was blind
-and terrible. The proletariat, overwhelmed in the same ratio by its
-victories and its defeats, overwhelmed by the ruins of the edifice
-which it was pulling down on its own head, torn by fearful internal
-struggles, casting<a class="pagenum" name="Page_209" id="Page_209" title="209"> </a> aside in its blind violence its best leaders and
-most trustworthy friends, fought on without system and in the dark.
-It was, however, continually winning some advantage: an increase of
-wages, shorter hours of work, a growing freedom of organisation and
-of propaganda, the conquest of public power, and making progress in
-the dumfounded public mind. It was looked upon as wrecked through its
-divisions and mistakes. But all great parties are at odds, and all
-commit blunders. The proletariat had on its side the force of events.
-Towards the end of the century it attained the degree of well-being
-which opens the way to better things. Comrade, a party must have
-within itself a certain strength in order to accomplish a revolution
-favourable to its interests. Towards the end of the twentieth century
-of the closed era the general situation had become most favourable
-to the developments of socialism. The standing armies, more and more
-reduced during the course of the century, were abolished, following
-upon a desperate opposition of the powers that were, and of the
-bourgeoisie owning all things, by Chambers born of universal suffrage
-under the fiery pressure of the people of the cities and of the
-country. For a long time past already, the chiefs of State had retained
-their armies, less in view of a war which they no longer dreaded or
-could hope for, than to hold in check the multitude<a class="pagenum" name="Page_210" id="Page_210" title="210"> </a> of proletaries
-at home. In the end, they yielded. Militias imbued with socialistic
-ideas supplanted regular armies. It was not without good cause that
-the governments showed opposition. No longer defended by guns and
-rifles, the monarchical systems succumbed in succession, and Republican
-Government stepped into their places. Alone, England, who had
-previously established a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i> considered endurable by the workers,
-and Russia, who had remained Imperialist and theocratic, stood outside
-the pale of this great movement. It was feared that the Czar, who felt
-towards republican Europe the sentiments which the French Revolution
-had inspired the great Catherine with, might raise armies to combat
-it. But his government had reached a degree of weakness and imbecility
-which only an absolute monarchy can attain. The Russian proletariat,
-joining hands with the intellectuals, rose in revolt, and after an
-awful succession of outrages and massacres, power passed into the hands
-of the revolutionaries, who established the representative system.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Telegraphy and wireless telephony were then in use from one end of
-Europe to the other, and so easy of use that the poorest of individuals
-could speak, whenever he wished, and give utterance to whatever he
-saw fit to a fellow creature living in any corner of the globe.
-Collectivist ideas rained<a class="pagenum" name="Page_211" id="Page_211" title="211"> </a> down on Moscow. The Russian peasants could
-listen in their beds to the speeches of their comrades of Marseilles
-and Berlin. Simultaneously, the approximate steering of balloons and
-the exact course of flying-machines came into practical use. The result
-was the abolition of frontiers. This was the most critical moment of
-all. The patriotic instinct took a fresh life in the hearts of the
-nations so near uniting and fusing into one boundless humanity. In
-all countries, and at one and the same time, the nationalist faith,
-rekindled, emitted flashes of light. As there were no longer any kings,
-armies, or aristocracy, this great movement assumed a tumultuous and
-popular character. The French Republic, the German Republic, the
-Hungarian Republic, the Roman Republic, the Italian Republic, and even
-the Swiss and Belgian Republics, each expressed by a unanimous vote
-of their respective Parliaments, and at largely attended meetings,
-the solemn resolve to defend against all foreign aggression national
-territory and industry. Stringent laws were promulgated repressing
-the smuggling by flying-machines, and regulating severely the use
-of wireless telegraphy. The militia was everywhere reorganised and
-brought back to the old type of standing armies. Once more did the
-former uniforms, boots, dolmans, and generals’ plumes make their
-appearance. Fur busbies were anew welcomed with the applause of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_212" id="Page_212" title="212"> </a> Paris.
-All the shopkeepers and a portion of the workmen donned the tricolour
-cockade. In all foundry districts, cannon and armour-plates were once
-more forged. Terrible wars were anticipated. This mad spurt lasted
-three years, without matters coming to a clash, and then it slackened
-imperceptibly. The militias gradually recovered the bourgeois aspect
-and feeling. The union of nations, which had seemed postponed to a
-fabled remoteness, was near at hand. Pacific efforts were developing
-day by day; collectivists were gradually achieving the conquest of
-society. The day came at last when the defeated capitalists abandoned
-the field to them.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘What a change!’ I exclaimed. ‘History cannot show another example of
-such a revolution.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘You may well imagine, comrade,’ resumed Morin, ‘that collectivism
-did not make its appearance till the appointed hour. The Socialists
-could not have suppressed capital and individual property had not those
-two forms of wealth been already all but destroyed <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">de facto</i> by the
-efforts of the proletariat, and still more so by the fresh developments
-of science and industry.</p>
-
-<p>“‘It had indeed been thought that Germany would be the first
-collectivist State; the Labour Party had there been organised for
-about one hundred years, and it was everywhere said: ‘Socialism is a
-thing German?’ Still, France, less well prepared, got the start of
-her.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_213" id="Page_213" title="213"> </a> The social revolution broke out in the first place at Lyons,
-Lille, and Marseilles, to the strains of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">l’Internationale</i>. Paris held
-aloof for a fortnight, and then hoisted the red flag. It was only on
-the following day that Berlin proclaimed the collectivist state. The
-triumph of socialism had as a result the union of nations.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The delegates of all the European Republics, sitting in Brussels,
-proclaimed the Constitution of the United States of Europe.</p>
-
-<p>“‘England refused to form part of it, but she declared herself its
-ally. While having become socialistic, she had retained her king,
-her lords, and even the wigs of her judges. Socialism was at that
-time supreme ruler in Oceania, China, Japan, and in a portion of
-the vast Russian Republic. Black Africa, which had entered upon the
-capitalistic phase, formed a confederation of little homogeneity. The
-American Union had a while ago renounced mercantile militarism. The
-condition of the world was consequently favourable, upon the whole,
-to the free development of the United States of Europe. Nevertheless,
-this union, welcomed with delirious joy, was followed for the space
-of half a century by economic disturbances and social miseries. There
-were no longer any armies, and hardly any militias; in consequence
-of not being constricted, popular movements did not take the form of
-violent outbreaks. But<a class="pagenum" name="Page_214" id="Page_214" title="214"> </a> the inexperience or the ill-will of the local
-governments was fostering a ruinous state of disorder.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Fifty years after the constitution of the States, the disappointments
-were so cruel, and the difficulties seemed to such a degree
-insurmountable, that the most optimistic spirits were beginning
-to despair. Smothered crackings foretold in all directions the
-dismemberment of the Union. It was then that the dictatorship of a
-committee composed of fourteen workmen put an end to anarchy, and
-organised the Federation of European nations as it exists to-day. There
-are those who say that the Fourteen displayed unparalleled genius and
-relentless energy; others claim that they were mediocrities terrified
-and influenced by the stress of necessity, and that they presided as
-if in spite of themselves over the spontaneous organisation of the
-new social forces. It is at all events certain that they did not go
-against the tide of events. The organisation which they established, or
-witnessed the establishment of, still subsists almost in its entirety.
-The production and consumption of goods are nowadays carried out, to
-all purposes, according to the rules laid down in those days. The new
-era justly dates from that time.’</p>
-
-<p>“Morin then expounded to me most succinctly the principles of modern
-society.</p>
-
-<p>“‘It rests,’ said he, ‘on the total suppression of individual
-property.’</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_215" id="Page_215" title="215"> </a>
-“‘Is not this intolerable to you?’ I asked.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Why should we find it unendurable, Hippolyte? In Europe, formerly,
-the State collected the taxes. It disposed of resources proper to it.
-Nowadays it can be said with an equal degree of truth that it possesses
-everything, while possessing nothing. It is still more exact to say
-that it is we who own all things, since the State is not a thing apart
-from us, and is merely the expression of collectiveness.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘But,’ I asked, ‘do you not possess anything proper to yourself? Not
-even the plates out of which you eat, nor your bed, your bed-sheets,
-your clothes?’</p>
-
-<p>“Morin smiled at my question.</p>
-
-<p>“‘You are a deal more simple than I dreamt, Hippolyte. What! You
-imagine that we are not the owners of our personal property. What can
-well be your idea of our tastes, our instincts, our needs, and our mode
-of living? Do you take us for monks, as was said in the olden days, for
-men destitute of all individual character and incapable of affixing
-a personal impress on our surroundings? You are mistaken, my friend,
-altogether mistaken. We hold as our own the objects destined to our use
-and comfort, and we feel more attached to them than were the bourgeois
-of the closed era to their knick-knacks, for our taste is keener, and
-we possess a livelier sentiment of form. All our comrades of some
-refinement own works of art, and take great<a class="pagenum" name="Page_216" id="Page_216" title="216"> </a> pride in them. Chéron has
-in her home paintings which are her delight, and she would take it
-amiss were the Federal Committee to contest with her the possession of
-them. Personally, I preserve in that closet some ancient drawings, the
-almost complete work of Steinlen, one of the most highly prized artists
-of the closed era. Neither silver nor gold would tempt me to part with
-them.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Whence have you come, Hippolyte? You are told that our society is
-based on the total suppression of individual property, and you get into
-your head that such suppression covers goods and chattels, and articles
-in daily use. But, you simple-minded fellow, the individual property
-totally suppressed by us is the ownership of the means of production,
-soil, canals, roads, mines, material, plant, &amp;c. It does not affect
-lamps and arm-chairs. What we have done away with is the possibility of
-diverting to the benefit of an individual or of a group of individuals
-the fruits of labour; ’tis not the natural and harmless possession of
-the beloved chattels about us.’</p>
-
-<p>“Morin next enlightened me as to the distribution of intellectual and
-manual labours among all the members of the community, in conformity
-with their aptitudes.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Collectivist society,’ he went on to say, ‘differs not only from
-capitalistic society in the fact that in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_217" id="Page_217" title="217"> </a> the former everybody works.
-During the closed era, the people who toiled not were in great numbers;
-still, they constituted the minority. Our society differs more
-especially from the former in that labour was not properly classified,
-and that many useless tasks were performed. The workers produced
-without systematic order, method, and concerted action. The cities
-were full of officials, magistrates, merchants, and clerks, who worked
-without producing. There were also the soldiers. The fruits of labour
-were not properly distributed. The customs and tariffs established
-for the purpose of remedying the evil merely aggravated matters. All
-were suffering. Production and consumption are now minutely regulated.
-Lastly, our society differs from the old one in that we enjoy all the
-benefits derived from machinery, the use of which, in the capitalistic
-age, was so frequently disastrous for the workers.’</p>
-
-<p>“I asked him how it had been possible to constitute a society composed
-wholly of workmen.</p>
-
-<p>“Morin pointed out to me that man’s aptitude for work is general, and
-that it constitutes one of the essential characteristics of the race.</p>
-
-<p>“‘In barbarian times,’ he said, ‘and right until the end of the closed
-era, the aristocratic and wealthy classes always showed a preference
-for manual labour. They put their intellectual faculties<a class="pagenum" name="Page_218" id="Page_218" title="218"> </a> to an
-infinitesimal use, and in exceptional instances at that. Their tastes
-always inclined towards such occupations as the chase and war, wherein
-the body plays a greater part than the mind. They rode, drove, fenced,
-and practised pistol-shooting. It may therefore be said of them that
-they worked with their hands. Their work was either sterile or harmful,
-for the reason that a certain prejudice forbade them to engage in any
-useful or beneficent work, and also, because in their day, useful work
-was most often carried out under ignoble and disgusting conditions. It
-did not prove so very difficult to impart a taste for work to every one
-by reinstating it in a position of honour. The men of the barbaric ages
-took pride in carrying a gun or wearing a sword. The men of to-day are
-proud of handling a spade or a hammer. Humanity rests on a foundation
-which undergoes but little change.’</p>
-
-<p>“Morin having told me that the very memory of all monetary circulation
-had become lost, I asked him:</p>
-
-<p>“‘How then do you carry on business without cash payments?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘We exchange products by means of vouchers similar to those just given
-you, comrade, and they correspond to the hours of labour performed
-by us. The value of the products is computed by the length of time
-their production has taken. Bread, meat,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_219" id="Page_219" title="219"> </a> beer, clothes, an aeroplane,
-represent <em>x</em> hours, <em>x</em> days of labour. From each of these vouchers,
-collectivism, or, as it was styled formerly, the State, deducts a
-certain number of minutes for the purpose of allocating them to
-unproductive works, metallurgic and alimentary reserves, refuges and
-private asylums, and so forth.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘These minutes,’ interjected Michel, ‘are continually increasing
-apace. The Federal Committee orders far too many great works, the
-burden of which is thus on our shoulders. The reserve stocks are far
-too considerable. The public warehouses are crowded to overflowing with
-riches of all sorts. ’Tis our minutes of labour which are entombed
-there. Many abuses are still in existence.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘No doubt,’ replied Morin, ‘there is room for improvement. The wealth
-of Europe, which has accrued through general methodical labour, is
-untold.’</p>
-
-<p>“I was curious to learn whether these folk had no other measurement of
-labour than the time required for its accomplishment, and whether in
-their case the day’s work of the navvy or of the journeyman tempering
-plaster ranked with that of the chemist or the surgeon. I put the
-question frankly.</p>
-
-<p>“‘What a silly question,’ exclaimed Perceval.</p>
-
-<p>“Nevertheless old Morin vouchsafed to enlighten me.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_220" id="Page_220" title="220"> </a>
-“‘All works of study, of research, in fact all works contributing to
-render life better and more beautiful are encouraged in our workshops
-and laboratories. The collectivist State fosters the higher studies. To
-study is akin to producing, since nothing is produced without study.
-Study, just as much as work, entitles one to existence. Those who
-devote themselves to long and arduous research secure unto themselves
-a peaceful and respected existence. It takes a sculptor a fortnight
-to make the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">maquette</i> of a figure, but he has worked five years to
-learn modelling. Now the State has paid him for his <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">maquette</i> during
-those five years. A chemist discovers in a few hours the particular
-properties of a body. But he has spent months in isolating this body,
-and years in fitting himself to become capable of such an undertaking.
-During the whole of that time he has lived at the expense of the State.
-A surgeon removes a tumour in ten minutes. This is the result of
-fifteen years of study and practice. He has, as a consequence, received
-vouchers from the State for fifteen years past. Every man who gives in
-a month, in an hour, in a few minutes, the product of his whole life,
-is merely repaying in a lump sum what collectivism has given him day by
-day.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Without reckoning,’ said Perceval, ‘that our great intellectuals,
-our surgeons, our lady doctors,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_221" id="Page_221" title="221"> </a> our chemists, know full well how to
-derive profit from their works and discoveries, and to add beyond
-measure to their enjoyments. They cause to be allotted to themselves
-aerial machines of 60 h.p., palaces, gardens, and immense parks. They
-are, for the greater part, individuals keenly alive to laying hold of
-the world’s goods, and lead a more splendid and more copious existence
-than the bourgeois of the closed era. The worst of it is that the
-majority of them are stupid fools who should be recruited for work at
-the flour-mills, like Hippolyte.’</p>
-
-<p>“I bowed my thanks. Michel approved Perceval, and bitterly lamented the
-accommodating mind of the State in its system of fattening chemists at
-the expense of the other workers.</p>
-
-<p>“I asked whether the negotiation of the vouchers did not bring about a
-rise and fall.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Speculation in vouchers,’ replied Morin, ‘is prohibited. As a matter
-of fact, it cannot be prevented altogether. There are among us, just as
-formerly, avaricious and prodigal, laborious and idle, rich and poor,
-happy and miserable, contented and discontented men. Yet all manage to
-exist, and that is already something.’</p>
-
-<p>“I fell a-musing for a while; then I remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Monsieur Morin, if one is to believe you, it seems to me that you
-have realised equality and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_222" id="Page_222" title="222"> </a> fraternity, as much as possible. But, I
-fear that it is at the expense of liberty, which I have learnt to
-cherish as the best of things.’</p>
-
-<p>“Morin shrugged his shoulders, saying:</p>
-
-<p>“‘We have not established equality. We know what it means. We have
-secured a livelihood for all. We have placed labour on a pedestal of
-honour. After that, if the bricklayer thinks himself superior to the
-poet, and the poet to the bricklayer, ’tis their business. Every one
-of our workers imagines that his form of labour is the grandest in the
-world. The advantages of this idea are greater than the disadvantages.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Comrade Hippolyte, you seem to have delved deeply into the books
-of the nineteenth century of the closed era; their leaves are hardly
-turned nowadays: you speak their language, to us a foreign tongue.
-It is hard for us to realise nowadays that the bygone friends of the
-people should have adopted as their motto: <em>Liberty</em>, <em>Equality</em>,
-<em>Fraternity</em>. Liberty has no place in society, since it does not exist
-in nature. There is no free animal. It was said formerly that a man who
-obeyed the laws was free. This was childish. Moreover, so strange a
-use was made of the word liberty in the last days of the capitalistic
-anarchy that the word has ended in merely expressing the setting claim
-to privileges. The idea of equality is still less reasonable, and it
-is an<a class="pagenum" name="Page_223" id="Page_223" title="223"> </a> unfortunate idea in that it presupposes a false ideal. We have
-not to seek whether men are equal among themselves. What we must see to
-is that each one shall supply his best and receive all necessaries of
-life. As to fraternity, we know only too well how brothers have acted
-towards brothers during the course of centuries. We do not pretend to
-say that men are bad. We do not say that they are good. They are what
-they are, but they live in peace, when there are no longer any reasons
-for them to fight one another. We have but a single word to express our
-social system. We say that we live in harmony. Now it is an assured
-fact that all human forces act in concert nowadays.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘In the centuries,’ I said to him, ‘of what you style the closed
-era, one preferred the possession of things to their enjoyment. I can
-conceive that, reversing the order of things, you prefer enjoyment to
-possession. But is it not distressing to you not to have any property
-to leave to your children?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘In capitalistic times,’ replied Morin with animation, ‘how many
-were there who left inheritances? One in a thousand; nay, one in ten
-thousand. Nor must it be forgotten that many generations did not enjoy
-the faculty of bequeathing. Be this as it may, the transmission of
-fortune through the medium of inheritances was perfectly<a class="pagenum" name="Page_224" id="Page_224" title="224"> </a> conceivable
-when the family was in existence. But now....’</p>
-
-<p>“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘you have no family ties?’</p>
-
-<p>“My surprise, which I had not been able to conceal, seemed comical to
-the woman-comrade Chéron.</p>
-
-<p>“‘We are quite aware,’ she said to me, ‘that marriage exists among
-the Kaffirs. We European women do not bind ourselves by promises; or,
-if we make them, the law does not take cognisance of them. We are of
-opinion that the whole destiny of a human being should not hang on a
-word. Nevertheless, there survives a relic of the customs of the closed
-era. When a woman gives herself, she swears fidelity on the horns of
-the moon. In reality, neither the man nor the woman takes any binding
-engagement. Yet it is not of rare occurrence that their union endures
-as long as life. Neither of them would wish to be the object of a
-fidelity secured by means of an oath, instead of by physical and moral
-expediency. We owe nothing to anybody. Formerly, a man convinced a
-woman that she belonged to him. We are less simple-minded. We believe
-that a human being belongs to itself alone. We give ourselves when we
-please, and to whom we see fit.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Moreover, we feel no shame in yielding to<a class="pagenum" name="Page_225" id="Page_225" title="225"> </a> desire. We are no
-hypocrites. Only four hundred years ago, physiology was a sealed book
-to men, and their ignorance was the cause of dire illusions and cruel
-deceptions. Hippolyte, whatever the Kaffirs may say, society must be
-subordinate to nature, and not, as too long has been the case, nature
-to society?’</p>
-
-<p>“Perceval, endorsing the speech of her comrade, added:</p>
-
-<p>“‘To show you how the sex question is regulated in our society, I must
-tell you, Hippolyte, that in many factories the recruiting delegate
-does not even inquire about one’s sex. The sex of an individual does
-not interest collectivism.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘But the children?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Well? The children?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Not having any family ideal, are they not neglected?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Whence did you get such an idea? Maternal love is a most powerful
-instinct in woman. In the hideous society of the past, mothers were to
-be seen courting misery and shame, in order to bring up illegitimate
-offspring. Why should ours, exempt as they are from shame and misery,
-forsake their little ones? There are among us many good partners, and
-many good mothers. But there is a very large number, which increases
-apace, of women who dispense with men.’</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_226" id="Page_226" title="226"> </a>
-“Chéron made in this connection a somewhat strange remark.</p>
-
-<p>“‘We have in regard to sexual characteristics,’ she said, ‘notions
-undreamt of in the barbaric simplicity of the men of the closed era.
-False conclusions were for a long time drawn from the fact that there
-are two sexes, and two only. It was therefrom concluded that a woman
-is absolutely female, and a man absolutely male. In reality, it is not
-thus; there are women who are very much women, while others are very
-little so. These differences, formerly concealed by the costume and
-the mode of life, and disguised by prejudice, make themselves clearly
-manifest in our society. More than that, they become accentuated and
-more marked with each succeeding generation. Ever since women have
-worked like men, and acted and thought like them, many are to be found
-who resemble men. We may some day reach the point of creating neutrals,
-and produce female workers, as in the case of bees. It will prove a
-great benefit, for it will become possible to increase the quantity of
-work without increasing the population in a degree out of proportion to
-the necessaries of life. We entertain the same dread of a deficit in
-and a surplus of births.’</p>
-
-<p>“I thanked Perceval and Chéron for having kindly supplied me with
-information on so interesting<a class="pagenum" name="Page_227" id="Page_227" title="227"> </a> a subject, and I inquired whether
-education was not neglected in collectivist society, and whether
-speculative science and the liberal arts still flourished.</p>
-
-<p>“The following is old Morin’s reply to my question:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Education, in all its degrees, is highly developed. The comrades all
-know something; they do not know the same things, nor have they learnt
-anything useless. No longer is any time lost in the study of law and
-theology. Each one selects from the arts and sciences what suits him.
-We still possess many ancient works, although the greater part of the
-works printed before the new era have perished. Books are still printed
-in greater quantity than ever. And yet typography is on the point of
-disappearing. Phonography will take its place. Poets and novelists are
-already being published phonographically, while in connection with
-theatrical plays, a most ingenious combination of the phono and the
-cinemato rendering both the voice and the play of the actors has been
-devised.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘You have then poets and playwrights?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘We not only have poets, but a poetry of our own. We are the first
-who have delimitated the domain of poetry. Previous to our time, many
-ideas which could have been better expressed in prose were expressed
-in verse. Narratives were unfolded in rhyme. This was a survival of
-the days<a class="pagenum" name="Page_228" id="Page_228" title="228"> </a> when legislative enactments and recipes of rural economy
-were drawn up in measured terms. Nowadays poets merely sing delicate
-subjects which have no meaning, while their grammar and language are
-as proper to them as their rhythm and assonance. As to our stage, it
-is almost exclusively lyric. A precise knowledge of reality and a life
-void of violence have rendered us almost indifferent to drama and
-tragedy. The uniformity of the classes and the equality of the sexes
-have deprived the old comedy of nearly all its subject-matter. But
-never has music been so beautiful and so beloved. We especially admire
-the sonata and the symphony.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Our society is greatly predisposed in favour of the arts of design.
-Many prejudices harmful to painting have vanished. Our life is more
-limpid and more beautiful than the bourgeois life, and we have a
-vivid appreciation of form. Sculpture is in a still more flourishing
-condition than painting, ever since it has taken an intelligent part in
-the ornamentation of public buildings and private dwellings. Never was
-so much done towards the teaching of art. If you will but steer your
-aeroplane above one of our streets, you will be surprised at the number
-of schools and museums.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘To sum matters up, are you happy?’ I inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Morin shook his head and replied:</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_229" id="Page_229" title="229"> </a>
-“‘It is not in human nature to enjoy perfect happiness. Happiness
-is not attainable without effort, and every effort brings with it
-fatigue and suffering. We have made life endurable to all. That is
-something. Our descendants will do better still. Our organisation is
-not immutable. Not fifty years ago, it was different from what it is
-to-day. Men endowed with subtile powers of observation believe that we
-are on the road to great changes. That may be. However, the forward
-steps in human civilisation will henceforth be harmonious and pacific.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Do you not fear, on the contrary,’ I asked him, ‘that the
-civilisation with which you appear to be satisfied may be destroyed
-by an invasion of barbarians? There still remain in Asia and Africa,
-so you have told me, large black or yellow populations which have not
-entered into your concert. They have armies, while you have none. Were
-they to attack you...’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Our defence is assured. The Americans and the Australians alone could
-enter upon a struggle with us, for they are as learned as ourselves.
-But the ocean separates us and a community of interests makes us sure
-of their amity. As to the capitalistic negroes, they have not got any
-further than the steel cannon, fire-arms and all the old scrap-iron
-of the twentieth century. What could these ancient engines<a class="pagenum" name="Page_230" id="Page_230" title="230"> </a> of war
-do against a discharge of Y-rays? Our frontiers are protected by
-electricity. A zone of lightning encircles the Federation. A little
-spectacled fellow is sitting I know not where, in front of a keyboard.
-He is our one and only soldier. He has but to touch a key in order to
-reduce to dust an army of 500,000 men.’</p>
-
-<p>“Morin ceased speaking for a moment; then he continued, speaking more
-deliberately:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Were our civilisation threatened, it would not be by any outside
-enemy. It would be by the enemies from within.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘There are such enemies, then?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘We have the anarchists. They are many, fiery, and intelligent. Our
-chemists and our professors of sciences and letters are almost to a man
-anarchists. They attribute to the regulation of labour and production
-the majority of the evils which still afflict society. They argue that
-humanity will not be happy except in the spontaneous harmony to be born
-of the total destruction of civilisation. They are dangerous. They
-would be still more so were we to repress them. To do this, however, we
-have neither the means nor the desire. We do not possess any power of
-coercion or repression, and we get along very well without it. In the
-barbaric ages, men nurtured great illusions in regard to the efficacy
-of penalties. Our fathers suppressed the judiciary<a class="pagenum" name="Page_231" id="Page_231" title="231"> </a> system entirely.
-They no longer required it. With the suppression of private property,
-they simultaneously suppressed theft and swindling. Ever since we have
-carried electric protectors, assaults are no longer to be feared. Man
-has come to be respected by man. Crimes of passion are still and will
-ever be committed. However, such crimes as these, if left unpunished,
-become rarer. Our entire judiciary body is composed of elected
-arbitrators who try gratuitously all offences and disputes.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I rose, and thanking my comrades for their kindness, I begged Morin
-the favour of putting one more question to him.</p>
-
-<p>“‘You no longer have any religion?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Quite the contrary; we have a large number of religions, some of
-them somewhat novel. To mention France only, we have the religion of
-humanity, positivism, Christianity, and spiritualism. In some countries
-there are still some Catholics, but they are few and split up into
-sects, as the result of schisms which <a name="occurred" id="occurred"></a><ins
-title="Original has occured">occurred</ins> in the
-twentieth century, when Church and State drifted apart. For a long time
-now there has not been any Pope.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘You are mistaken,’ said Michel. ‘There is still a Pope. It is by a
-mere chance that I know of him. He is Pius XXV., dyer, Via dell’ Orso,
-in Rome.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘the Pope is a dyer!’”</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_232" id="Page_232" title="232"> </a>
-“‘What is there surprising about that! He must perforce have a trade,
-just as everybody else.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘But his Church?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘He is recognised by a few thousands, in Europe.’</p>
-
-<p>“With these words, we parted. Michel informed me that I should find a
-lodging in the neighbourhood, and that Chéron would conduct me to it on
-her way home.</p>
-
-<p>“The night was illuminated with an opalescent light both powerful and
-soft. It gave the foliage the sheen of enamel. I walked by the side of
-Chéron.</p>
-
-<p>“I looked her over. Her flat-soled shoes gave firmness to her gait
-and balance to her body; although her male habiliments made her seem
-smaller than she was, and in spite of her having one hand in her
-pocket, her perfectly simple carriage did not lack dignity. She gazed
-freely to the right and left of her. She was the first woman in whom I
-had noticed the air of a curious and amused lounger. Her features, seen
-from under her tam-o’-shanter, were refined and strongly defined. She
-both irritated and charmed me. I was in dread that she might consider
-me stupid and ridiculous. It was, to say the least, plain that my
-personality inspired her with supreme indifference. Nevertheless, of
-a sudden she asked me what my trade might be. I answered at haphazard
-that I was an electrician.</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_233" id="Page_233" title="233"> </a>
-“‘So am I,’ she said.</p>
-
-<p>“I prudently put an end to the conversation.</p>
-
-<p>“Unheard-of sounds were filling the night air with their calm rhythmic
-noise, and I listened in affright to the respiration of the monstrous
-genius of this new world.</p>
-
-<p>“The more I looked at the female electrician, the more did I feel a
-desire for her, a desire fanned by a dash of antipathy.</p>
-
-<p>“‘So of course,’ I said to her of a sudden, ‘you have regulated love
-scientifically, and ’tis a matter which no longer causes any one
-uneasiness.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘You are mistaken,’ she replied. ‘We have naturally got beyond the mad
-imbecility of the closed era, and the whole domain of human physiology
-is henceforth freed from legal barbarisms and theological terrors. We
-are no longer the prey to an erroneous and cruel conception of duty.
-But the laws governing the attraction between body and body are still
-a mystery to us. The spirit of the species is what it ever was and
-ever shall be, violent and capricious. Now, just as formerly, instinct
-remains stronger than reason. Our superiority over the ancients lies
-less in the knowledge of it than in proclaiming it. We have within us a
-force capable of creating worlds, to wit, desire, and you would have us
-regulate it. ’Tis asking too much of us. We are no longer barbarians.
-We have not yet<a class="pagenum" name="Page_234" id="Page_234" title="234"> </a> become wise. Collectivism altogether ignores all that
-appertains to sexual relations. These relations are what they may be,
-most often tolerable, rarely delicious, and at times horrible. But,
-comrade, do not imagine that love no longer troubles any one.’</p>
-
-<p>“I could not discuss such extraordinary ideas. I diverted the
-conversation to the temperament of women. Chéron informed me that there
-were three kinds, those who were amorously disposed, those prompted by
-curiosity, and the third, indifferent. I thereupon asked her to which
-class she belonged.</p>
-
-<p>“She looked at me somewhat haughtily and said:</p>
-
-<p>“‘There are also various kinds of men. First and foremost are the
-impertinent ones....’</p>
-
-<p>“Her reply caused her to appear far more contemporaneous than I had
-until then believed her to be. For that reason I began to speak to her
-the language used by me on similar occasions. After a few trifling and
-frivolous words I said to her:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Will you grant me a favour and tell me your first name?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I have none?’</p>
-
-<p>“She perceived that this seemed to vex me, for she resumed with some
-show of pique:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Do you think that a woman must, in order to be pleasing to you,
-possess a first name, like the ladies of former days, a baptismal name
-such as Marguerite, Thérèse, or Jeanne?’</p>
-
-<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_235" id="Page_235" title="235"> </a>
-“‘You are a living proof to the contrary.’</p>
-
-<p>“I sought her gaze, but it did not respond to mine. She seemed not to
-have heard. I could no longer entertain doubts: she was a coquette. I
-was delighted. I told her that I found her charming, that I loved her,
-and I told her so over and over again. She suffered me to go on with my
-speeches, and finally asked:</p>
-
-<p>“‘What do you mean by all this!’</p>
-
-<p>“I became more pressing.</p>
-
-<p>“‘She reproached me for taking liberties with her, exclaiming:</p>
-
-<p>“‘Your ways are those of a savage.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I do not find acceptance with you?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I do not say so.’</p>
-
-<p>“Chéron, Chéron, would it cost you any great effort to...’</p>
-
-<p>“We sat down together on a bench over which an elm cast its shade. I
-took her hand, and carried it to my lips ... of a sudden, I no longer
-felt, no longer saw anything, and I found myself lying in bed at home.
-I rubbed my eyes, smarting with the morning light, and I saw my valet
-who, standing before me with a stupid look, was saying to me:</p>
-
-<p>“It is nine o’clock, sir. You told me to wake you at nine o’clock, sir.
-I have come to tell you, sir, that it is nine o’clock?”</p>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_236" id="Page_236" title="236"> </a></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_237" id="Page_237" title="237"> </a>
-<a name="vi" id="vi"></a>VI</h2>
-
-
-<div class="width80">
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-h_drop.jpg" width="80" height="88" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="uppercase">Hippolyte</span> Dufresne was warmly congratulated by his friends on his
-finishing the reading of his story.</p>
-
-<p>Nicole Langelier, applying to him the words of Critias to Triephon,
-said:</p>
-
-<p>“You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people
-of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a
-night.”</p>
-
-<p>“It is not likely,” remarked Joséphin Leclerc, “that the future
-will be such as you have seen it. I do not wish for the coming of
-socialism, but I dread it not. Collectivism at the helm would be quite
-another thing than is imagined. Who was it who said, carrying back his
-thoughts to the time of Constantine and of the Church’s early triumphs:
-‘Christianity is triumphant, but its triumph is subject to the
-conditions imposed by life on all political and religious parties. All
-of them, whatever they may be, undergo so complete a transformation<a class="pagenum" name="Page_238" id="Page_238" title="238"> </a>
-in the struggle that after victory there remains of themselves but the
-name and a few symbols of the last idea’?”</p>
-
-<p>“Must we then give up the idea of knowing the future?” asked M. Goubin.</p>
-
-<p>But Giacomo Boni, who when delving down into a few feet of soil had
-descended from the present period to the stone age, remarked:</p>
-
-<p>“Upon the whole, humanity changes little. What has been shall be.”</p>
-
-<p>“No doubt,” replied Jean Boilly, “man, or that which we call man,
-changes little. We belong to a definite species. The evolution of the
-species is of necessity included in the definition of the species. It
-is impossible to conceive humanity subsequent to its transformation. A
-transformed species is a lost species. But what reason is there for us
-to believe that man is the end of the evolution of life upon the earth?
-Why suppose that his birth has exhausted the creative forces of nature,
-and that the universal mother of the flora and fauna should, after
-having shaped him, become for ever barren. A natural philosopher, who
-does not stand in fear of his own ideas, H. G. Wells, has said: ‘Man
-is not final.’ No indeed, man is neither the beginning nor the end of
-terrestrial life. Long before him, all over the globe, animated forces
-were multiplying in the depths of the sea, in the mud of the strand,
-in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_239" id="Page_239" title="239"> </a> the forests, lakes, prairies, and tree-topped mountains. After him,
-new forms will go on taking shape. A future race, born perhaps of our
-own, but having perchance no bond of origin with us, will succeed us in
-the empire of the planet. These new spirits of the earth will ignore or
-despise us. The monuments of our arts, should they discover vestiges of
-them, will have no meaning for them. Rulers of the future, whose mind
-we can no more divine than the palæopithekos of the Siwalik Mountains
-was able to forecast the trains of thought of Aristotle, Newton, and
-Poincaré.”</p>
-
-
-<p class="center">THE END</p>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-<div class="tn">
-<p class="center">Transcriber’s Note:</p>
-
-<p class="noi">Quotation marks have been standardised. Spelling and hyphenation have
-been retained as they appear in the original publication except as
-follows:</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li>Page 8 Καὶ εμοιγε δοκειτε ἐπὶ λευκαδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείροων<br />
-καταδαρθεντες τοσαῡτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτός ὄυσης.<br />
-<i>changed to</i><br />
-<a href="#Greek">Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων<br />
-καταδαρθέντες τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς<br />
-οὔσης.</a></li>
-
-<li>Page 63 since his tenous substance <i>changed to</i><br />
-since his <a href="#tenuous">tenuous</a> substance</li>
-
-<li>Page 65 would facedeath for a <i>changed to</i><br />
-would <a href="#face">face death</a> for a</li>
-
-<li>Page 72 are quarelling over <i>changed to</i><br />
-are <a href="#quarrelling">quarrelling</a> over</li>
-
-<li>Page 111 and by a similiar <i>changed to</i><br />
-and by a <a href="#similar">similar</a></li>
-
-<li>Page 120 personages of the diologue are <i>changed to</i><br />
-personages of the <a href="#dialogue">dialogue</a> are</li>
-
-<li>Page 184 it as absurd <i>changed to</i><br />
-<a href="#is">is</a> as absurd</li>
-
-<li>Page 191 were on the whole androginous in <i>changed to</i><br />
-were on the whole <a href="#androgynous">androgynous</a> in</li>
-
-<li>Page 201 produced and consumed? <i>changed to</i><br />
-produced and <a href="#fullstop">consumed.</a></li>
-
-<li>Page 231 schisms which occured in <i>changed to</i><br />
-schisms which <a href="#occurred">occurred</a> in</li>
-</ul>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The White Stone, by Anatole France
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49092 ***</div>
+
+<div class="hidehand">
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="515" height="837" alt="Cover" />
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="title-page">
+<hr />
+<p class="noi center">THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE<br />
+IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION<br />
+EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN</p>
+
+<h1>THE WHITE STONE</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/title.jpg" width="400" height="465" alt="Title page" />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="title-page">
+<hr />
+<p class="title"><span class="p200">THE WHITE STONE</span></p>
+<p class="title">BY ANATOLE FRANCE</p>
+
+<p class="title">A TRANSLATION BY<br />
+CHARLES E. ROCHE</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/title2.jpg" width="400" height="607" alt="Title page" />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="title mt4">LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD<br />
+NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMX</p>
+
+<hr />
+<p class="title">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne &amp; Co, Limited</span><br />
+Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London</p>
+
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a name="contents" id="contents"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Content">
+<tr>
+<th class="tdr">CHAP.</th>
+<th></th>
+<th class="tdr2">PAGE</th>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#i">9</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Gallio</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#ii">29</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iii">107</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iv">147</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">V.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Through the Horn or the
+Ivory Gate</span></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#v">183</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td class="tdr2"><a href="#vi">237</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noi nmb"><a name="Greek" id="Greek"></a>Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων καταδαρθέντες
+τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς οὔσης.</p>
+
+<p class="right nmt nmb">(Philopatris, xxi.)</p>
+
+<p class="noi">And to me it seems that you have fallen asleep upon a white rock, and
+in a parish of dreams, and have dreamt all this in a moment while it
+was night.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_9" id="Page_9" title="9"> </a>
+<a name="i" id="i"></a><span class="red">THE WHITE STONE</span><br />
+I</h2>
+
+<div class="width80">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-chap1.jpg" width="80" height="87" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">A few</span> Frenchmen, united in friendship, who were spending the spring in
+Rome, were wont to meet amid the ruins of the disinterred Forum. They
+were Joséphin Leclerc, an Embassy Attaché on leave; M. Goubin, licencié
+ès lettres, an annotator; Nicole Langelier, of the old Parisian family
+of the Langeliers, printers and classical scholars; Jean Boilly, a
+civil engineer, and Hippolyte Dufresne, a man of leisure, and a lover
+of the fine arts.</p>
+
+<p>Towards five o’clock of the afternoon of the first day of May, they
+wended their way, as was their custom, through the northern door,
+closed to the public, where Commendatore Boni, who superintended the
+excavations, welcomed them with quiet amenity, and led them to the
+threshold of his house of wood nestling in the shadow of laurel bushes,
+privet hedges and cytisus, and rising above the vast<a class="pagenum" name="Page_10" id="Page_10" title="10"> </a> trench, dug down
+to the depth of the ancient Forum, in the cattle market of pontifical
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Here, they pause awhile, and look about them.</p>
+
+<p>Facing them rise the truncated shafts of the Columnæ Honorariæ, and
+where stood the Basilica of Julia, the eye rested on what bore the
+semblance of a huge draughts-board and its draughts. Further south, the
+three columns of the Temple of the Dioscuri cleave the azure of the
+skies with their blue-tinted volutes. On their right, surmounting the
+dilapidated Arch of Septimus Severus, the tall columns of the Temple
+of Saturn, the dwellings of Christian Rome, and the Women’s Hospital
+display in tiers, their facings yellower and muddier than the waters of
+the Tiber. To their left stands the Palatine flanked by huge red arches
+and crowned with evergreen oaks. At their feet, from hill to hill,
+among the flagstones of the Via Sacra, narrow as a village street,
+spring from the earth an agglomeration of brick walls and marble
+foundations, the remains of buildings which dotted the Forum in the
+days of Rome’s strength. Trefoil, oats, and the grasses of the field
+which the wind has sown on their lowered tops, have covered them with
+a rustic roof illumined by the crimson poppies. A mass of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">débris</i>,
+of crumbling entablatures, a multitude of pillars and altars, an
+entanglement of steps and enclosing walls: all this indeed not stunted
+but of a serried vastness and within limits.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_11" id="Page_11" title="11"> </a>
+Nicole Langelier was doubtless reviewing in his mind the host of
+monuments confined in this famed space:</p>
+
+<p>“These edifices of wise proportions and moderate dimensions,” he
+remarked, “were separated from one another by narrow streets full of
+shade. Here ran the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">vicoli</i> beloved in countries where the sun shines,
+while the generous descendants of Remus, on their return from hearing
+public speakers, found, along the walls of the temples, cool yet
+foul-smelling corners, whence the rinds of water-melons and castaway
+shells were never swept away, and where they could eat and enjoy their
+siesta. The shops skirting the square must certainly have emitted the
+pungent odour of onions, wine, fried meats, and cheese. The butchers’
+stalls were laden with meats, to the delectation of the hardy citizens,
+and it was from one of those butchers that Virginius snatched the knife
+with which he killed his daughter. There also were doubtless jewellers
+and vendors of little domestic tutelary deities, protectors of the
+hearth, the ox-stall, and the garden. The citizens’ necessaries of life
+were all centred in this spot. The market and the shops, the basilicas,
+<abbr title="that is">i.e.</abbr>, the commercial Exchanges and the civil tribunals; the Curia,
+that municipal council which became the administrative power of the
+universe; the prisons, whose vaults emitted their much dreaded and
+fetid<a class="pagenum" name="Page_12" id="Page_12" title="12"> </a> effluvia, and the temples, the altars, of the highest necessity
+to the Italians who have ever some thing to beg of the celestial powers.</p>
+
+<p>“Here it was, lastly, that during a long roll of centuries were
+accomplished the vulgar or strange deeds, almost ever flat and dull,
+oftentimes odious and ridiculous, at times generous, the agglomeration
+of which constitutes the august life of a people.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is it that one sees, in the centre of the square, fronting the
+commemorative pedestals?” inquired M. Goubin, who, primed with an
+eye-glass, had noticed a new feature in the ancient Forum, and was
+thirsting for information concerning it.</p>
+
+<p>Joséphin Leclerc obligingly answered him that they were the foundations
+of the recently unearthed colossal statue of Domitian.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon he pointed out, one after the other, the monuments laid bare
+by Giacomo Boni in the course of his five years’ fruitful excavations:
+the fountain and the well of Juturna, under the Palatine Hill; the
+altar erected on the site of Cæsar’s funeral pile, the base of which
+spread itself at their feet, opposite the Rostra; the archaic stele and
+the legendary tomb of Romulus over which lies the black marble slab of
+the Comitium; and again, the Lacus Curtius.</p>
+
+<p>The sun, which had set behind the Capitol, was<a class="pagenum" name="Page_13" id="Page_13" title="13"> </a> striking with its
+last shafts the triumphal arch of Titus on the towering Velia. The
+heavens, where to the West the pearl-white moon floated, remained as
+blue as at midday. An even, peaceful, and clear shadow spread itself
+over the silent Forum. The bronzed navvies were delving this field of
+stones, while, pursuing the work of the ancient Kings, their comrades
+turned the crank of a well, for the purpose of drawing the water which
+still forms the bed where slumbered, in the days of pious Numa, the
+reed-fringed Velabrum.</p>
+
+<p>They were performing their task methodically and with vigilance.
+Hippolyte Dufresne, who had for several months been a witness of their
+assiduous labour, of their intelligence and of their prompt obedience
+to orders, inquired of the director of the excavations how it was that
+he obtained such yeoman’s work from his labourers.</p>
+
+<p>“By leading their life,” replied Giacomo Boni. “Together with them do I
+turn over the soil; I impart to them what we are together seeking for,
+and I impress on their minds the beauty of our common work. They feel
+an interest in an enterprise the grandeur of which they apprehend but
+vaguely. I have seen their faces pale with enthusiasm when unearthing
+the tomb of Romulus. I am their everyday comrade, and if one of them
+falls ill, I take a seat at his bedside. I place as great faith in them
+as<a class="pagenum" name="Page_14" id="Page_14" title="14"> </a> they do in me. And so it is that I boast of faithful workmen.”</p>
+
+<p>“Boni, my dear Boni,” exclaimed Joséphin Leclerc, “you know full well
+that I admire your labours, and that your grand discoveries fill me
+with emotion, and yet, allow me to say so, I regret the days when
+flocks grazed over the entombed Forum. A white ox, from whose massive
+head branched horns widely apart, chewed the cud in the unploughed
+field; a hind dozed at the foot of a tall column which sprang from the
+sward, and one mused: Here was debated the fate of the world. The Forum
+has been lost to poets and lovers from the day that it ceased to be the
+Campo Formio.”</p>
+
+<p>Jean Boilly dwelt on the value of these excavations, so methodically
+carried out, as a contribution towards a knowledge of the past. Then,
+the conversation having drifted towards the philosophy of the history
+of Rome:</p>
+
+<p>“The Latins,” he remarked, “displayed reason even in the matter of
+their religion. Their gods were commonplace and vulgar, but full of
+common sense and occasionally generous. If a comparison be drawn
+between this Roman Pantheon composed of soldiers, magistrates, virgins,
+and matrons and the deviltries painted on the walls of Etruscan tombs,
+reason and madness will be found in juxtaposition. The infernal scenes
+depicted in the mortuary chambers<a class="pagenum" name="Page_15" id="Page_15" title="15"> </a> of Corneto represent the monstrous
+creations of ignorance and fear. They seem to us as grotesque as
+Orcagna’s <em>Day of Judgment</em> in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and the
+<em>Dantesque Hell</em> of the Campo Santo of Pisa, whereas the Latin Pantheon
+reflects for ever the image of a well-organised society. The gods of
+the Romans were like themselves, industrious and good citizens. They
+were useful deities, each one having its proper function. The very
+nymphs held civil and political offices.</p>
+
+<p>“Look at Juturna, whose altar at the foot of the Palatine we have so
+frequently contemplated. She did not seem fated by her birth, her
+adventures, and her misfortunes to occupy a permanent post in the
+city of Romulus. An incensed Rutula, beloved by Jupiter, who rewarded
+her with immortality, when King Turnus fell by the hand of Æneas, as
+decreed by the Fates, she flung herself into the Tiber, to escape thus
+from the light of day, since it was denied her to perish with her royal
+brother. Long did the shepherds of Latium tell the story of the living
+nymph’s lamentations from the depths of the river. In later years, the
+villagers of rural Rome, when looking down at night-time over the bank,
+imagined that they could see her by the moon’s rays, lurking in her
+glaucous garments among the rushes. The Romans, however, did not leave
+her to the idle contemplation of her sorrows. They promptly conceived<a class="pagenum" name="Page_16" id="Page_16" title="16"> </a>
+the idea of allotting to her an important duty, and entrusted her
+with the custody of their fountains, converting her into a municipal
+goddess. And so it is with all their divinities. The Dioscuri, whose
+temple lives in its beautiful ruins, the Dioscuri, the brothers of
+Helen, the sparkling <em>Gemini</em>, were put to good use by the Romans, as
+messengers of the State. The Dioscuri it was, who, mounted on a white
+charger, brought to Rome the news of the victory of Lake Regillus.</p>
+
+<p>“The Italians asked of their gods only temporal and substantial
+benefits. In this respect, notwithstanding the Asiatic fears which have
+invaded Europe, their religious sentiment has not changed. That which
+they formally demanded from their gods and their genii, they nowadays
+expect from the Madonna and the Saints. Every parish possesses its
+Beatified patron, to whom requests are preferred just as in the case of
+a Deputy. There are Saints for the vine, for cereals, for cattle, for
+the colic, and for toothache. Latin imagination has repeopled Heaven
+with a multitude of living bodies, and has converted Judaic monotheism
+into a new polytheism. It has enlivened the Gospels with a copious
+mythology; it has re-established a familiar intercourse between the
+divine and the terrestrial worlds. The peasantry demand miracles of
+their protecting Saints, and hurl invectives at them if the miracle is
+slow of manifestation.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_17" id="Page_17" title="17"> </a> The peasant who has in vain solicited a favour
+of the Bambino, returns to the chapel, and addressing on this occasion
+the Incoronata herself, exclaims:</p>
+
+<p>“‘I am not speaking to you, you whoreson, but to your sainted mother.’</p>
+
+<p>“The women make the Madre di Dio a confidant of their love affairs.
+They believe with some show of reason that being a woman she
+understands, and that there is no need to be on a footing of delicacy
+with her. They have no fear of going too far&mdash;a proof of their piety.
+Hence we must view with admiration the prayer which a fine lass of
+the Genoese Riviera addressed to the Madonna: ‘Holy Mother of God,
+who didst conceive without sin, grant me the grace of sinning without
+conceiving.’”</p>
+
+<p>Nicole Langelier here remarked that the religion of the Romans lent
+itself to the evolution of Rome’s policy.</p>
+
+<p>“Bearing the stamp of a distinctly national character,” he said, “it
+was, for all that, capable of penetrating the minds of foreign nations,
+and of winning them over by its sociable and tolerant spirit. It was an
+administrative religion propagating itself without effort together with
+the rest of the administration.”</p>
+
+<p>“The Romans loved war,” said M. Goubin, who studiously avoided
+paradoxes.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_18" id="Page_18" title="18"> </a>
+“They loved not war for itself,” was Jean Boilly’s rejoinder. “They
+were far too reasonable for that. That military service was to them a
+hardship is revealed by certain signs. Monsieur Michel Bréal tells you
+that the word which primarily expressed the equipment of the soldier,
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ærumna</i>, subsequently assumed the general meaning of lassitude, need,
+trouble, hardship, toil, pain, and distress. Those peasants were just
+as other peasants. They entered the ranks merely because compelled and
+forced thereto. Their very leaders, the wealthy proprietors, waged war
+neither for pleasure nor for glory. Previous to entering on a campaign,
+they consulted their interests twenty times over, and carefully
+computed the chances.”</p>
+
+<p>“True,” said M. Goubin, “but their circumstances and the state of the
+world compelled them ever to be in arms. Thus it is that they carried
+civilisation to the far ends of the known world. War is above all an
+instrument of progress.”</p>
+
+<p>“The Latins,” resumed Jean Boilly, “were agriculturists who waged
+agriculturists’ wars. Their ambitions were ever agricultural. They
+exacted of the vanquished, not money, but soil, the whole or part of
+the territory of the subjugated confederation, generally speaking
+one-third, out of friendship, as they said, and because they were
+moderate in their desires. The farmer came and drove his plough<a class="pagenum" name="Page_19" id="Page_19" title="19"> </a> over
+the spot where the legionary had a short while ago planted his pike.
+The tiller of the soil confirmed the soldier’s conquests. Admirable
+soldiers, doubtless, well disciplined, patient, and brave, who fought
+and who were sometimes beaten just like any others; yet still more
+admirable peasants. If wonder is felt at their having conquered so many
+lands, still more is it to be wondered at that they should have kept
+them. The marvel of it is that in spite of the many battles they lost,
+these stubborn peasants never yielded an acre of soil, so to speak.”</p>
+
+<p>While this discussion was proceeding, Giacomo Boni was gazing with a
+hostile eye at the tall brick house standing to the north of the Forum
+on top of several layers of ancient substructures.</p>
+
+<p>“We are about,” he said, “to explore the Curia Julia. We shall soon, I
+hope, be in a position to break up the sordid building which covers its
+remains. It will not cost the State much to purchase it for the spade’s
+work. Buried under nine mètres of soil on which stands the Convent of
+S. Adriano lie the flagstones of Diocletian, who restored the Curia
+for the last time. We shall surely find among the rubbish a number
+of the marble tables on which the laws were engraved. It is a matter
+of interest to Rome, to Italy, nay to the whole world, that the last
+vestiges of the Roman Senate should see the light of day.”</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_20" id="Page_20" title="20"> </a>
+Thereupon he invited his friends into his hut, as hospitable and rustic
+a one as that of Evander.</p>
+
+<p>It constituted a single room wherein stood a deal table laden with
+black potteries and shapeless fragments giving out an earthy smell.</p>
+
+<p>“Prehistorical treasures!” sighed Joséphin Leclerc. “And so, my good
+Giacomo Boni, not content with seeking in the Forum the monuments of
+the Emperors, those of the Republic, and those of the Kings, you must
+fain sink down into the soil which bore flora and fauna that have
+vanished, drive your spade into the quaternary, and the tertiary,
+penetrate the pliocene, the miocene, and the eocene; from Latin
+archæology you wander to prehistoric archæology and to palæontology.
+The salons are expressing alarm at the depths to which you are
+venturing. Countess Pasolini would like to know where you intend to
+stop, and you are represented in a little satirical sheet as coming out
+at the Antipodes, breathing the words: <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">Adesso va bene!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Boni seemed not to have heard.</p>
+
+<p>He was examining with deep attention a clay vessel still damp and
+covered with ooze. His pale blue expressive eyes darkened while
+critically examining this humble work of man for some unrevealed
+trace of a mysterious past, but resumed their natural hue as the
+Commendatore’s mind wandered off into a reverie.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_21" id="Page_21" title="21"> </a>
+“These remains which you have before you,” he presently remarked,
+“these roughly hewn little wooden sarcophagi and these cinerary urns of
+black pottery and of house-like shape containing calcined bones were
+gathered under the Temple of Faustina, on the north-west side of the
+Forum.</p>
+
+<p>“Black urns containing ashes, and skeletons resting in their coffins
+as if in a bed, are here to be met with side by side. The funeral
+rites of the Greeks and the Romans included both those of burial and
+of cremation. Over the whole of Europe, in prehistoric days, the two
+customs were simultaneously observed, in the same city and in the same
+tribe. Does this dual fashion of sepulture correspond with the ideals
+of two races? I am inclined to believe so.”</p>
+
+<p>Picking up, with reverential and almost ritual gesture, an urn shaped
+like a dwelling and containing a small quantity of ashes, he went on:</p>
+
+<p>“The men who in immemorial times gave this form to clay, believed that
+the soul, being attached to the bones and the ashes, had need of a
+dwelling, but that it did not require a very large house wherein to
+live the abridged life of the dead. These men were of a noble race
+which came from Asia. The one whose light ashes I now hold lived before
+the days of Evander and of the shepherd Faustulus.”</p>
+
+<p>Then, making use of the phraseology of the ancients, he added:</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_22" id="Page_22" title="22"> </a>
+“Those were the days when King Vitulus, King Calf as we should say,
+held peaceful sway over this country so pregnant with glory. Monotonous
+pastoral times reigned over the Ausonian plain. These men were,
+however, neither ignorant nor boorish. Much priceless knowledge had
+come to them from their forefathers. Both the ship and the oar were
+known to them. They practised the art of subjecting oxen to the yoke
+and of harnessing them to the pole. They kindled at will the divine
+flame. They gathered salt, wrought in gold, kneaded and baked vases
+of clay. Probably too they began to till the soil. They do say that
+the Latin shepherds became agricultural labourers in the fabled days
+of the Calf. They cultivated millet, wheat, and spelt. They stitched
+skins together with needles of bone. They wove and perchance made wool
+false to its whiteness by dyeing it various colours. By the phases of
+the moon did they measure time. They gazed upon the heavens but to
+discover in them what was in the world below. They saw in them the
+greyhound who watches for Diospiter the shepherd who tends the starry
+flock. The prolific clouds were to them the Sun’s cattle, the cows
+supplying milk to the cerulean countryside. They worshipped the heavens
+as their Father, and the Earth as their Mother. At eventide, they heard
+the chariots of the gods, like themselves migratory,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_23" id="Page_23" title="23"> </a> roll along the
+mountain roads with their ponderous wheels. They enjoyed the light of
+day and pondered with sadness over the life of the souls in the Kingdom
+of Shadows.</p>
+
+<p>“We know that these massive-headed Aryans were fair, since their gods,
+made to their own image, were fair. Indra had locks like ears of wheat
+and a beard as tawny as the tiger’s coat. The Greeks conceived the
+immortal gods with blue or glaucous eyes, and a head of golden hair.
+The goddess Roma was <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">flava et candida</i>:</p>
+
+<p>“Were it possible to make a whole out of these calcined bony fragments,
+the result would be pure Aryan forms. In those massive and vigorous
+skulls, in those heads as square as the primary Rome which their sons
+were to build, you would recognise the ancestors of the patricians of
+the Commonwealth, the long flourishing stock which produced tribunes
+of the people, pontiffs, and consuls; you would be handling the
+magnificent mould of the robust brains which constructed religion, the
+family, the army, and the public laws of the most strongly organised
+city that ever existed.”</p>
+
+<p>Gently placing the bit of pottery on the rustic table, Giacomo Boni
+bends over a coffin the size of a cradle, a coffin dug out of the trunk
+of an oak, and similar in shape to the early canoes of man. He lifts up
+the thin covering of bark and sap-wood<a class="pagenum" name="Page_24" id="Page_24" title="24"> </a> forming the lid of that funeral
+wherry, and brings to light bones as frail as a bird’s skeleton. Of
+the body, there hardly remains the spinal column, and it would bear
+resemblance to one of the lowest of vertebrata, such as a big saurian,
+did not the fullness of the forehead reveal man. Coloured beads, which
+have become detached from a necklace, are scattered over these bones
+browned with age, washed by subterraneous waters, and exhumed from
+clayey soil.</p>
+
+<p>“Look!” says Boni, “at this little boy who was not given the honours of
+cremation, but buried, and returned as a whole to the earth whence he
+sprung. He is not a son of headmen, nor a noble inheritor of the traits
+of a fair race. He belongs to the race indigenous to the Mediterranean,
+the race which became the Roman <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">plebs</i>, and which supplies Italy to
+the present day with subtile lawyers and calculating individuals. He
+was born in the Palatine City of the Seven Hills, in days seen dimly
+through the mist of heroic fables. It is a Romulean boy. In those
+days, the Valley of the Seven Hills was a morass, and the slopes of
+the Palatine were covered with reed-thatched huts only. A tiny lance
+was placed on the coffin to show that the child was a male. He was
+barely four years old when he fell asleep in death. Then his mother
+clothed him with a beautiful tunic clasped at the neck, around which
+she fastened a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_25" id="Page_25" title="25"> </a> string of beads. The kinsmen did not begrudge him their
+offerings. They deposited on his tomb, in urns of black earthenware,
+milk, beans, and a bunch of grapes. I have collected these vessels and
+I have fashioned similar ones out of the same clay by the heat of a
+wood fire lit in the Forum at night. Previous to taking a last farewell
+of him, they ate and drank together a portion of their offerings; this
+funeral repast assuaged their sorrow. Child, thou who sleepest since
+the days of the god Quirinus, an Empire has passed over thy agrestic
+coffin, and the same stars which shone at thy birth are about to light
+up the skies above us. The unfathomable space which separates the hours
+of your life from those of our own constitutes but an imperceptible
+moment in the life of the Universe.”</p>
+
+<p>After a moment’s silence, Nicole Langelier remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“It is as difficult to distinguish amid a people the races composing it
+as to trace in the course of a river the streams which mingle with it.
+What constitutes, moreover, a race? Do any human races really exist?
+I see white men, red men, and black men. But, they do not constitute
+races; they are merely varieties of the same race, of the same species,
+which form together fruitful unions and intermingle without ceasing.
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">A fortiori</i>, the man of learning knows not several yellow races or
+several white races.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_26" id="Page_26" title="26"> </a> Human beings invent, however, races in pursuance
+of their vanity, their hatred, or their greed. In 1871, France became
+dismembered by virtue of the rights of the Germanic race, and yet no
+German race has an existence. The antiemites kindle the hatred of
+Christian peoples against the Jews, and still there is no Jewish race.</p>
+
+<p>“What I state on the subject, Boni, is purely speculative, and not with
+the view of running counter to your ideas. How could one not believe
+you! Conviction has its home on your lips. Moreover, you blend in your
+thoughts the profound verities of poetry with the far-spreading truths
+of science. As you truly state, the shepherds who came from Bactriana
+peopled Greece and Italy. As you again say, they found there natives
+of the soil. In ancient days, a belief shared in common by Italians
+and Hellenes was that the first men who peopled their country were
+like Erectheus, born of Mother Earth. Nor do I pretend, my dear Boni,
+that you cannot trace through the centuries the antochthones of your
+Ausonia, and the immigrants from the Pamir; the former, intelligent
+and eloquent plebeians; the latter, patricians fully impregnated with
+courage and faith. For, when all is said, if there are not, properly
+speaking, several human races, and if still less so several white
+races, our species assuredly comprises distinct varieties oftentimes
+stamped with marked characteristics. Hence there is nothing to hinder<a class="pagenum" name="Page_27" id="Page_27" title="27"> </a>
+two or more of these varieties living for a long time side by side
+without fusing, each one preserving its individual characteristics.
+Nay, these differences may occasionally, in lieu of vanishing with the
+course of time under the action of the plastic forces of nature, on
+the contrary become accentuated more strongly through the empire of
+immutable customs, and the stress of social institutions.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">E proprio vero</i>,” said Boni in a low tone, as he replaced the oaken
+lid on the coffin of the Romulean child.</p>
+
+<p>Then, begging his guests to be seated, he said to Nicole Langelier:</p>
+
+<p>“I shall now hold you to your promise, and beg you to read to us that
+story of Gallio, at which I have seen you at work in your little room
+in the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">Foro Traiano</i>. You make Romans speak in your script. This is
+the spot to hear your narrative, here in a corner of the Forum, close
+by the Via Sacra, between the Capitol and the Palatine. Tarry not with
+your reading, so as not to be overtaken by the twilight, and lest your
+voice be quickly drowned by the cries of the birds warning one another
+of approaching night.”</p>
+
+<p>The guests of Giacomo Boni welcomed the foregoing utterance with a
+murmur of approval, and Nicole Langelier, without waiting for more
+pressing entreaties, unrolled a manuscript and read aloud the following
+narrative.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_28" id="Page_28" title="28"> </a></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_29" id="Page_29" title="29"> </a>
+<a name="ii" id="ii"></a>II<br />
+
+GALLIO</h2>
+
+
+<div class="width80">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-i_drop.jpg" width="80" height="87" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap2"><span class="uppercase">In</span> the 804th year of the foundation of Rome, and the 13th of the
+principality of Claudius Cæsar, Junius Annæus Novatus was proconsul of
+Achaia. Born of a knightly family of Spanish origin, a son of Seneca
+the Rhetor and of the chaste Helvia, a brother of Annæus Mela, and of
+the famed Lucius Annæus, he bore the name of his adoptive father, the
+Rhetor Gallio, exiled by Tiberius. In his mother’s veins flowed the
+same blood as that of Cicero, and he had inherited from his father,
+together with immense wealth, a love of letters and of philosophy. He
+studied the works of the Greeks even more assiduously than those of the
+Latins. His mind was a prey to noble aspiration. He was an interested
+student of nature and of what appertains to her. The activity of his
+intelligence was so keen that he enjoyed being read to while in his
+bath, and that, even when joining in the chase, he was wont to<a class="pagenum" name="Page_30" id="Page_30" title="30"> </a> carry
+with him his tablets of wax and his stylus. During the leisure moments
+which he managed to secure in the intervals of most serious duties and
+most important works, he wrote books on subjects relating to nature,
+and composed tragedies.</p>
+
+<p>His clients and his freedmen loudly proclaimed his gentleness. His was
+indeed a genial character. He had never been known to give way to a fit
+of anger. He looked upon violence as the worst and most unpardonable of
+weaknesses.</p>
+
+<p>All deeds of cruelty were held in execration by him, save when their
+true character escaped him owing to the consecration of custom and of
+public opinion. He frequently discovered, amid the severities rendered
+sacred by ancestral usage and sanctified by the laws, revolting
+excesses against which he raised his voice in protest, and which he
+would have attempted to sweep away, had not the interests of the State
+and the common welfare been objected from all quarters. In those days,
+conscientious magistrates and honest functionaries were not few and far
+between throughout the Empire. There were indeed a number as honest and
+as impartial as Gallio himself, but it is to be doubted whether another
+could be found so humane.</p>
+
+<p>Entrusted with the administration of that Greece despoiled of her
+riches, her pristine glory departed, and fallen from her freedom so
+full of life into<a class="pagenum" name="Page_31" id="Page_31" title="31"> </a> an idle tranquillity, he remembered that she had
+formerly taught the world wisdom and the fine arts, and his treatment
+of her combined the vigilance of a guardian with the reverence of
+a son. He respected the liberties of the cities and the rights of
+individuals. He showed honour to those who were truly Greeks by birth
+and education, regretting that their numbers were sorely restricted,
+and that his authority extended for the greater part over an infamous
+rabble of Jews and Syrians; yet he remained equitable in dealing with
+these Asiatics, laying unction to his soul for what he considered a
+meritorious endeavour.</p>
+
+<p>He dwelt in Corinth, the richest and most densely populated city of
+Roman Greece. His villa, built in the time of Augustus, enlarged
+and embellished since then by the pro-consuls who had governed the
+province in succession, stood on the furthermost western slopes of the
+Acrocorinthus, whose foliaged summit was crowned by the Temple of Venus
+and the groves where dwelt her priests. It was a somewhat spacious
+mansion surrounded by gardens studded with bushy trees, watered by
+springs, ornamented with statues, alcoves, gymnasia, baths, libraries,
+and altars consecrated to the gods.</p>
+
+<p>He was strolling in it on a certain morn, according to his wont,
+with his brother Annæus Mela, discoursing on the order of nature and
+the vicissitudes<a class="pagenum" name="Page_32" id="Page_32" title="32"> </a> of fortune. The sun was rising, hazy in its white
+splendour in the roseate heavens. The gentle undulations of the hills
+of the Isthmus concealed the Saronic shore, the Stadium, the sanctuary
+of the sports, and the eastern harbour of Cenchreæ. Between the fallow
+slopes of the Geranean range and the crimson twin-peaked Helicon, one
+could, however, obtain a glimpse of the quiescent blue waters of the
+Alcyonium Mare. In the distance, and to the north, glistened the three
+snow-capped summits of Parnassus. Gallio and Mela proceeded together
+as far as the edge of the elevated foreground. At their feet spread
+Corinth standing on an extensive plateau of pale yellow sand, and
+sloping gently towards the spumous fringe of the Gulf. The pavements of
+the forum, the columns of the basilica, the tiers of the hippodrome,
+the white steps of the porches sparkled, while the gilded roofs of the
+temples flashed dazzling rays. Vast and new, the town was intersected
+with straight-running streets. A wide road descended to the harbour of
+Lechæum, whose shore was fringed with warehouses and whose waters were
+covered with ships. To the west, the atmosphere reeked with the smoke
+of the iron-foundries, while the streams ran black from the pollution
+of the dye-houses, and on that side, forests of pine extending to the
+edge of the horizon, were lost to sight in the skies.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_33" id="Page_33" title="33"> </a>
+Gradually, the town awoke from its slumbers. The strident neighing of a
+horse rent the morning calm, and soon were heard the muffled rumblings
+of wheels, shouting of waggoners, and the chanting voices of women
+selling herbs. Emerging from their hovels amid the ruins of the Palace
+of Sisyphus, aged and blind hags bearing copper vessels on their heads,
+and led by children, wended their way to draw water from the Pirene
+fountain. On the flat roofs of the houses abutting the grounds of the
+proconsul, Corinthian women were spreading linen to dry, and one of
+them was castigating her child with leek-stalks. In the hollow road
+leading to the Acropolis, a semi-nude old bronze-coloured man, prodded
+the rump of an ass laden with salad herbs and chanted between the
+stumps of his teeth and in his unkempt beard, a slave-song:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="line indent2">“Toil, little ass,</div>
+<div class="line indent3">As I have toiled.</div>
+<div class="line">Much good will it do you:</div>
+<div class="line">You may be sure of it.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, at the sight of the town resuming its daily labour, Gallio
+fell a-musing over the earlier Corinth, the lovely Ionian city, opulent
+and joyous until the day when she witnessed the massacre of her
+citizens by the soldiery of Mummius, her women, the noble daughters of
+Sisyphus, sold at auction, her<a class="pagenum" name="Page_34" id="Page_34" title="34"> </a> palaces and temples the prey of flames,
+her walls razed to the ground, and her riches piled away into the
+Liburnian ships of the Consul.</p>
+
+<p>“Hardly a century ago,” he remarked, “the work wrought by Mummius still
+stood revealed in all its horror. The shore which you see, brother
+mine, was more of a desert than the Libyan sands. The divine Julius
+rebuilt the town wrecked by our arms, and peopled it with freedmen. On
+this very strand, where the illustrious Bacchiadæ formerly revelled
+in their haughty indolence, poor and rude Latins settled, and Corinth
+entered upon a new lease of life. She grew rapidly, and realised how to
+take advantage of her position. She levies tribute on all ships which,
+whether from the East or from the West, cast anchor in her two harbours
+of Lechæum and Cenchreæ. Her population and wealth increase apace under
+the ægis of the Roman peace.</p>
+
+<p>“What blessings has not the Empire bestowed throughout the world! To
+the Empire is due the profound tranquillity which the countryside
+enjoys. The seas are swept of pirates, and the highways of robbers.
+From the befogged Ocean to the Permulic Gulf, from Gades to the
+Euphrates, the trading of merchandise proceeds in undisturbed security.
+The law protects the lives and property of all. Individual rights must
+not be infringed upon. Liberty has henceforth no other limits than its
+lines of defence,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_35" id="Page_35" title="35"> </a> and is circumscribed for its own security alone.
+Justice and reason rule the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Unlike his two brothers, Annæus Mela had not intrigued for honours.
+Those who loved him, and their name was legion, for he was ever in his
+intercourse affable and extremely pleasant, attributed his detachment
+from public affairs to the moderation of a mind attracted by the
+blessings of tranquil obscurity, a mind which had no other care than
+the study of philosophy. But those who observed him with greater
+insight were under the impression that he was ambitious after his own
+fashion, and that like Mæcenas, he, a simple knight, was consumed with
+the envy of enjoying the same consideration as the consuls. Lastly,
+certain evil-minded individuals believed that they discerned in him the
+greed of the Senecas for the riches which they affected to despise, and
+thus did they explain to themselves that Mela had for a long time lived
+in obscurity in Betica, giving himself up entirely to the management of
+his vast estates, and that subsequently summoned to Rome by his brother
+the philosopher, he had devoted himself to the administration of the
+finances of the Empire, rather than go in the quest of high judiciary
+or military posts. His character could not be readily determined from
+his utterances, for he spoke the language of the Stoics, a language
+equally adapted for the concealment of the weaknesses of the mind and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_36" id="Page_36" title="36"> </a>
+the revelation of the grandeur of one’s sentiments. It was in those
+days the height of elegance to utter virtuous discourse. At any rate,
+there is no doubt that Mela spoke his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>He replied to his brother that, although not versed in public affairs
+like himself, he had had occasion to admire the power and wisdom of the
+Romans.</p>
+
+<p>“They reveal themselves,” he said, “in the most remote parts of our own
+Spain. But it is in a wild pass of the mountains of Thessaly that I
+have been made to appreciate at its highest the beneficent majesty of
+the Empire. I had come from Hypata, a town renowned for its cheeses,
+and whose women were notorious for witchcraft, and I had been riding
+for some hours along mountain paths, without coming across a human
+face. Overcome by the heat and fatigue, I tethered my horse to a tree
+by the road, and lay down under an arbutus-bush. I had been resting
+there a short while only, when there came along a lean old man bowed
+down under a load of branches. Utterly exhausted, he tottered in his
+steps, and just as he was about to fall, exclaimed: ‘Cæsar.’ On hearing
+such an invocation escape the lips of a poor woodcutter in this stony
+solitude, my heart overflowed with veneration for the tutelary City,
+which inspires, even unto the farthermost lands, the most rustic of
+minds with so great a conception<a class="pagenum" name="Page_37" id="Page_37" title="37"> </a> of its sovereign providence. But
+sadness and a feeling of distress mingled with my admiration, brother
+mine, when I reflected upon the injury and insults to which the
+inheritance of Augustus and the fortune of Rome were exposed through
+men’s folly and the vices of the century.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have witnessed on the spot, brother mine,” replied Gallio, “the
+crimes and follies which sadden your mind. My cheek has blanched under
+the gaze of the victims of Caius from my seat in the Senate. I have
+held my peace, as I did not despair of better days. I am of the opinion
+that good citizens should serve the Republic under bad princes rather
+than shirk their duty in a useless death.”</p>
+
+<p>As Gallio was uttering these sentiments, two men, still in their youth
+and wearing the toga, came up to him. The one was Lucius Cassius, of a
+Roman family, plebeian but ancient, and having attained distinction.
+The other, Marcus Lollius, son and grandson of consuls, and moreover of
+a knightly family, which had sprung from the free town of Terracina.
+Both had frequented the schools of Athens, and acquired a knowledge of
+the laws of nature of which those Romans who had not been in Greece
+were totally ignorant.</p>
+
+<p>At the present moment, they were studying in Corinth the management
+of public affairs, and the proconsul surrounded himself with them as
+an<a class="pagenum" name="Page_38" id="Page_38" title="38"> </a> ornamental adjunct to his magistracy. Somewhat behind them, the
+Greek Apollodorus, wearing the short cape of the philosophers, bald of
+head, and with Socratic beard, sauntered along, with uplifted arm and
+gesticulating fingers, discussing with himself.</p>
+
+<p>Gallio welcomed all three of them in kindly fashion.</p>
+
+<p>“The rose of dawn is already fading,” he said, “and the sun is
+beginning to shed its steeled darts. Come along, my good friends, to
+the coolness of the shady foliage beyond.”</p>
+
+<p>Saying this, he led them along the banks of a stream whose babbling
+murmur invited peaceful reflections, until they had reached an
+enclosure of verdant bushes in the midst of which lay in a hollow an
+alabaster basin filled with limpid waters on whose surface floated
+the feather of a dove, which had just bathed in them, and which was
+now cooing plaintively from a branch. They took their seats on a
+semicircular marble bench supported by griffins. Laurel and myrtle
+bushes blended their shadows about it. Statues encircled the enclosure.
+A wounded Amazon gracefully coiled her arm about her head. Grief
+appeared a thing of beauty on her lovely face. A shaggy Satyr was
+playing with a goat. A Venus, emerging from the bath, was drying her
+wetted limbs along which a shudder of pleasurable emotion seemed to
+run. Near by, a youthful<a class="pagenum" name="Page_39" id="Page_39" title="39"> </a> Faun was smilingly placing a flute to his
+lips. His face was partly concealed by the branches, but his shining
+belly glistened amid the leafage.</p>
+
+<p>“That Faun seems animated,” remarked Marcus Lollius. “One could imagine
+that a gentle breathing was causing his bosom to heave.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is true to life, Marcus,” said Gallio. “One expects to hear rustic
+melodies flow from his flute. A Greek slave carved him out of the
+marble, in imitation of an ancient model. The Greeks formerly excelled
+in the making of these fanciful statues. Several of their efforts in
+this style are justly renowned. There is no gainsaying it: they have
+found the means of giving august traits to the gods and of expressing
+in both marble and bronze the majesty of the masters of the world. Who
+but admires the Olympian Zeus? And yet, who would care to be Phidias!”</p>
+
+<p>“No Roman would assuredly care to be Phidias,” exclaimed Lollius,
+who was spending the fortune he had inherited from his ancestry in
+ornamenting his villa at Pausilypum with the masterpieces of Phidias
+and Myron brought over from Greece and Asia.</p>
+
+<p>Lucius Cassius was of the same opinion. He argued with some warmth that
+the hands of a free man were not made to wield the sculptor’s chisel
+or the painter’s brush, and that no Roman citizen would condescend to
+the degrading work of casting<a class="pagenum" name="Page_40" id="Page_40" title="40"> </a> bronze, hewing marble into shape, and
+painting forms on a wall.</p>
+
+<p>He professed admiration for the manners of the ancient times, and
+vaunted at every opportunity the ancestral virtues.</p>
+
+<p>“Men of the stamp of Curius and Fabricius cultivated their
+lettuce-beds, and slept under thatched roofs,” he said. “They wot of no
+other statue than the Priapus carved in the heart of a box-tree, who,
+protruding his vigorous pale in the centre of their garden, threatened
+pilferers with a terrible and shameful punishment.”</p>
+
+<p>Mela, who was well versed in the annals of Rome, opposed to this
+opinion the example of an old patrician.</p>
+
+<p>“In the days of the Republic,” he pointed out, “that illustrious man,
+Caius Fabius, of a family issued from Hercules and Evander, limned with
+his own hand on the walls of the Temple of Salus paintings so highly
+prized that their recent loss, on the destruction of the temple by
+fire, has been considered a public misfortune. It is moreover related
+that he did not doff his toga when painting, thus to indicate that such
+work was not unworthy of a Roman citizen. He was given the surname of
+Pictor, which his descendants were proud to bear.”</p>
+
+<p>Lucius Cassius replied with vivacity:</p>
+
+<p>“When painting victories in a temple, Caius<a class="pagenum" name="Page_41" id="Page_41" title="41"> </a> Fabius had in mind those
+victories, and not the painting of them. No painters existed in Rome
+in those days. Anxious that the doughty deeds of his ancestors should
+for ever be present to the gaze of the Romans, he set an example to the
+artisans. But just as a pontiff or an ædile lays the first stone of
+an edifice, without exercising for that the trade of a mason or of an
+architect, Caius Fabius executed the first painting Rome boasted of,
+without it being permissible to number him with the workmen who earn
+their livelihood by painting on walls.”</p>
+
+<p>Apollodorus signified approval of this speech with a nod, and, stroking
+his philosophic beard, remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“The sons of Ascanius are born to rule the world. Any other care would
+be unworthy of them.”</p>
+
+<p>Then, speaking at some length and in well-rounded sentences, he sang
+the praises of the Romans. He flattered them because he feared them.
+But in his innermost being, he felt nothing but contempt for their
+shallow intelligences so devoid of finesse. He beslavered Gallio with
+praise in these words:</p>
+
+<p>“Thou hast ornamented this city with magnificent monuments. Thou hast
+assured the liberty of its Senate and of its people. Thou hast decreed
+excellent regulations for trade and navigation, and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_42" id="Page_42" title="42"> </a> thou dispensest
+justice with even tempered equity. Thy statue shall stand in the Forum.
+The title shall be granted to you of the second founder of Corinth, or
+rather Corinth shall take from you the name of Annæa. All these things
+are worthy of a Roman, and worthy of Gallio. But, do not think that the
+Greeks have an exaggerated affection for the manual arts. If many of
+them are engaged in painting vases, in dyeing stuffs, and in modelling
+figures, it is through necessity. Ulysses constructed his bed and his
+ship with his own hands. At the same time, the Greeks proclaim that it
+is unworthy of a wise man to give himself up to futile and gross arts.
+In his youth, Socrates followed the trade of a sculptor, and modelled
+an image of the Charites still to be seen on the Acropolis of Athens.
+His skill was certainly not of a mediocre order, and, had he so wished,
+he could, like the most renowned artists, have portrayed an athlete
+throwing a discus or bandaging his head. But he abandoned like works
+to devote himself to the quest of wisdom, as commanded by the oracle.
+Henceforth, he attached himself to young men, not for the purpose of
+measuring the proportions of their bodies but solely to teach them that
+which is honest. He preferred those whose soul was beautiful to those
+of perfect form, differing in this respect from sculptors, painters and
+debauchees, who consider only external<a class="pagenum" name="Page_43" id="Page_43" title="43"> </a> beauty, despising the inner
+comeliness. You are aware that Phidias engraved on the great toe of his
+Jupiter the name of an athlete, because he was handsome, and without
+considering whether he was pure.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hence it is,” was Gallio’s summing up, “that we do not sing the
+praises of sculptors, while bestowing them on their works.”</p>
+
+<p>“By Hercules!” exclaimed Lollius, “I do not know whether to admire most
+that Venus or that Faun. The goddess seems to reflect coolness from
+the water still dripping from her. She is truly the desire of gods and
+men; do you not fear, Gallio, that some night, a lout concealed in your
+grounds may subject her to an outrage similar to the one inflicted by a
+profane youth, so it is reported, on the Aphrodite of the Cnidians? The
+priestesses of her temple discovered one morning traces of the outrage
+on the body of the goddess, and travellers affirm that from that day
+until now she bears the indelible mark of her defilement. The audacity
+of the man and the patience of the Immortal One are to be wondered at.”</p>
+
+<p>“The crime did not remain unpunished,” affirmed Gallio. “The
+sacrilegious profaner flung himself into the sea, and fell on the rocks
+a shapeless mass. He was never again seen.”</p>
+
+<p>“There can be no doubt,” resumed Lollius,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_44" id="Page_44" title="44"> </a> “that the Venus of Cnidus
+surpasses all others in beauty. But the artisan who carved the one in
+your grounds, Gallio, knew how to make marble plastic. Look at that
+Faun; he is laughing, and saliva moistens his teeth and his lips; his
+cheeks have the fresh bloom of the apple: his whole body glistens with
+youth. However, I prefer the Venus to the Faun.”</p>
+
+<p>Raising his right arm, Apollodorus said:</p>
+
+<p>“Most gentle Lollius, just think a bit, and you will fain admit that
+a like preference is pardonable in an ignorant individual who follows
+his instincts and who reasons not, but that it is not permitted to one
+as wise as yourself. That Venus cannot be as beautiful as that Faun,
+for the body of woman enjoys a perfection lesser than that of man, and
+the copy of a thing which is less perfect can never equal in beauty the
+copy of a thing that is more perfect. No doubt can assuredly exist,
+Lollius, that the body of woman is less beautiful than that of man,
+since it contains a less beautiful soul. Women are vain, quarrelsome,
+their mind occupied with trifles and incapable of elevated thoughts,
+while sickness oftentimes obscures their intellect.”</p>
+
+<p>“And yet,” remarked Gallio, “both in Rome and in Athens, virgins and
+matrons have been held worthy of presiding over sacred rites and of
+placing offerings on the altars. Nay more, the gods have<a class="pagenum" name="Page_45" id="Page_45" title="45"> </a> at times
+selected virgins to give utterance to their oracular words, or to
+reveal the future to men. Cassandra wore the bands of Apollo about her
+head and prophesied the discomfiture of the Trojans. Juturna, to whom
+the love of a god gave immortality, was entrusted with the guardianship
+of the fountains of Rome.”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite true,” replied Apollodorus. “But the gods sell dearly to virgins
+the privilege of interpreting their wishes, and of announcing future
+events. While conferring on them the power of seeing that which is
+hidden, they deprive them of their reason and inflict madness on them.
+I will, however, Gallio, grant you that some women are better than some
+men and that some men are less good than some women. This arises from
+the fact that the two sexes are not as distinct and separate from each
+other as one would believe, and that, quite on the contrary, there
+is something of man in many women, and of woman in many a man. The
+following is the explanation of this commingling:</p>
+
+<p>“The ancestors of the men who nowadays people the earth sprang from
+the hands of Prometheus, who, to give them shape, kneaded the clay
+as does the potter. He did not confine himself to shaping with his
+hands a single couple. Far too prudent and too industrious to cause
+the entire human race to grow from one seed and from a single vessel,
+he<a class="pagenum" name="Page_46" id="Page_46" title="46"> </a> undertook the manufacture of a multitude of women and men, in
+order to secure at once to humanity the advantage of numbers. In order
+better to carry out so difficult a work, he modelled separately at the
+outset all the parts which were to constitute both male and female
+bodies. He fashioned as many lungs, livers, hearts, brains, bladders,
+spleens, intestines, matrices and generative organs as were required,
+and, lastly, he made with subtle art, and in sufficient quantity,
+all the organs by means of which human beings might breathe freely,
+feed themselves, and enjoy the reproduction of the species. He forgot
+neither muscles, tendons, bones, blood nor fluids. He next cut out
+skins, intending to place in each one, as in a sack, the requisite
+articles. All these component parts of men and women were duly
+finished, and nothing remained but to put them together, when he was of
+a sudden invited to partake of supper at the residence of Bacchus. He
+went thither, crowned with roses, and indulged too freely in libations
+to the god, returning with tottering steps to his workshop. His brain
+befogged with the fumes of wine, his eyesight dimmed, and his hands
+shaky, he resumed his task, greatly to our misfortune. The distribution
+of organs among human beings seemed to him an easy enough pastime. He
+knew not what he was about, and was perfectly contented with his job,
+however<a class="pagenum" name="Page_47" id="Page_47" title="47"> </a> badly he accomplished it. He was constantly and inadvertently
+allotting to woman that which was proper to man, and to man the things
+pertaining to woman.</p>
+
+<p>“Thus it came about that our first parents were composed of
+ill-assorted pieces which did not harmonise. And, having mated
+by choice or at haphazard, they produced beings as incoherent as
+themselves. Thus has it come about, through the Titan’s fault, that we
+see so many virile women and so many effeminate men. This also explains
+the contradictory characteristics to be met with in the firmest of
+minds and how it is that the most determined character is perpetually
+false to itself. And, finally, this is why we are all at variance with
+our own selves.”</p>
+
+<p>Lucius Cassius expressed condemnation of this fable, because it did not
+teach man to conquer himself, but on the contrary induced him to yield
+to nature.</p>
+
+<p>Gallio pointed out that the poets and philosophers gave a different
+interpretation as to the origin of the world and the creation of
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>“The fables told by the Greeks,” he said, “should not be believed
+in too blindly, nor should we hold as truthful, Apollodorus, what
+they state in particular concerning the stones thrown by Pyrrha. The
+philosophers are not in accord among themselves<a class="pagenum" name="Page_48" id="Page_48" title="48"> </a> as to the principle
+presiding over the creation of the world, and leave us in doubt as to
+whether the earth was produced by water, by air, or, as seems more
+credible, by the subtile heat. But the Greeks wish to know all things,
+and so they forge ingenious falsehood. How much better it is to confess
+our ignorance. The past is as much concealed from us as is the future;
+we are circumscribed by two dense clouds, in the forgetfulness of
+what was, and in the uncertainty of what shall be. And yet we suffer
+ourselves to be the playthings of an inquisitive desire to become
+acquainted with the causes of things, and a consuming anxiety incites
+us to ponder over the destinies of mankind and of the world.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is true,” sighed Cassius, “that we are everlastingly striving to
+penetrate the impenetrable future. We toil at this quest with all our
+might, and call to our aid all kinds of means. Anon we think to attain
+our object by meditation; again, by prayer and ecstasy. Some of us
+consult the oracles of the gods; others, fearing not to do that which
+is forbidden, appeal to the augurs of Chaldæa, or try the Babylonian
+spells. Futile and sacrilegious curiosity! For, of what advantage would
+be to us the knowledge of future things, since they are inevitable!
+Nevertheless the wise men, still more so than the vulgar herd, feel
+the desire of delving into the future and of, so to speak, hurling
+themselves into<a class="pagenum" name="Page_49" id="Page_49" title="49"> </a> it. It is doubtless because they hope thus to escape
+the present which inflicts on them so much that is sad and distasteful.
+Why should not the men of to-day be goaded with the desire of fleeing
+from these wretched times? We are living in an age replete with deeds
+of cowardice, abounding in ignominious acts, and fertile in crimes.”</p>
+
+<p>Cassius spoke at some length in depreciation of the times in which he
+lived. He lamented the fact that the Romans, fallen from their ancient
+virtues, no longer found any pleasure except in the consumption of the
+oysters of the Lucrine lake and of the birds of Phasis river, and that
+they had no taste except for mummers, chariot-drivers, and gladiators.
+He deplored the ills which the Empire was suffering from, the insolent
+luxury of the great, the contemptible avidity of the clients, and the
+savage depravity of the multitude.</p>
+
+<p>Gallio and his brother agreed with him. They loved virtue.
+Nevertheless, they had nothing in common with the patricians of old
+who, having no other care than the fattening of their swine, and the
+performance of the sacred rites, conquered the world for the better
+administration of their farms. This nobility of the byre, instituted
+by Romulus and Remus, was long since extinct. The patrician families
+created by the divine Julius and by the Emperor Augustus, had passed
+away. Intelligent<a class="pagenum" name="Page_50" id="Page_50" title="50"> </a> men from all the provinces of the Empire had stepped
+into their places. Romans in Rome, they were nowhere strangers. They
+greatly surpassed the old Cethegus family by their refined minds
+and humane feelings. They did not regret the Republic; they did not
+regret liberty, the recollection of which recalled simultaneously
+proscriptions and civil wars. They honoured Cato as the heroic figure
+of another age, without wishing to see so exalted a type of virtue
+arise on top of fresh ruins. They looked upon the Augustan epoch and
+the first years of Tiberius as the happiest the world had ever known,
+since the Golden Age had existed in the imagination of the poets only.
+They lamented the fact that the new order of things, which had promised
+the world a long reign of felicity, should have so promptly burdened
+Rome with an unheard of shame unknown even to the contemporaries of
+Marius and Sulla. They had, during the madness of Caius, seen the best
+citizens branded with a hot iron, sentenced to the mines, to labour on
+the roads, thrown to wild beasts, fathers compelled to be present at
+the agony of their children, and men shining by their virtues, such as
+Cremutius Cordus, suffer themselves to die of starvation, in order to
+cheat the tyrant of their death. To Rome’s shame, be it said, Caligula
+respected neither his sisters nor the most illustrious dames. And, what
+filled these rhetors and philosophers<a class="pagenum" name="Page_51" id="Page_51" title="51"> </a> with as great an indignation as
+the one they felt over the rape of the matrons and the assassination
+of the best citizens, were the crimes perpetrated by Caius against
+eloquence and letters. This madman had conceived the idea of destroying
+the poems of Homer, and had caused to be removed from all bookshelves
+the writings, the portraits, and the names of Virgil and of Livy.
+Finally, Gallio could not forgive him for having compared the style of
+Seneca to mortar without cement.</p>
+
+<p>They dreaded Claudius in a somewhat lesser degree, but despised him
+the more for all that. They ridiculed his pumpkin-like head and his
+seal-like voice. That old savant was not a monster of wickedness.
+The worst they could reproach him with was his weakness. But, in the
+exercise of the sovereign power, such weakness became at times as cruel
+as the cruelty of Caius. They also bore domestic grievances against
+him. If Caius had held Seneca up to ridicule, Claudius had banished him
+to Corsica. It is true that he had subsequently recalled him to Rome
+and conferred a prætorship on him. But they showed him no gratitude
+for having thus carried out the behests of Agrippina, in ignorance of
+what he was commanding. Indignant but long suffering, they left it
+to the Empress to determine the fate of the aged man, and the choice
+of the new prince. Many rumours were current<a class="pagenum" name="Page_52" id="Page_52" title="52"> </a> to the shame of the
+unchaste and cruel daughter of Germanicus. They heeded them not, and
+sang the praises of the illustrious woman to whom the Senecas owed
+the termination of their misfortune and their rise in honours. As
+will oftentimes happen, their convictions were in harmony with their
+interests. A painful experience of public life had left unshaken their
+trust in the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</i> established by the divine Augustus, a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</i>
+placed on a firmer basis by Tiberius, and under which they filled high
+positions. They were reckoning on a new master to redress the evils
+engendered by the masters of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Gallio produced from the folds of his toga a roll of papyrus.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear friends,” he said, “I have learnt this morning, through letters
+from Rome, that our young prince has married Octavia, the daughter of
+Cæsar.”</p>
+
+<p>A murmur of approval greeted the news.</p>
+
+<p>“We should indeed,” continued Gallio, “congratulate ourselves over
+a union, by virtue of which the prince, combining with his former
+qualifications those of husband and of son-in-law, becomes henceforth
+the equal of Britannicus. My brother Seneca never ceases praising in
+his letters to me the eloquence and gentleness of his pupil who sheds
+lustre on his youth by pleading before the Senate in the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_53" id="Page_53" title="53"> </a> presence of
+the Emperor. He has not yet completed his sixteenth year, yet he has
+already won the cases of three unfortunate or guilty cities&mdash;Ilion,
+Bolonia, and Apamea.”</p>
+
+<p>“He has not then,” asked Lucius Cassius, “inherited the evil
+disposition of the Domitians, his ancestors?”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed he has not,” replied Gallio. “It is Germanicus who lives anew
+in him.”</p>
+
+<p>Annæus Mela, who was not looked upon as a sycophant, joined in the
+praise of the son of Agrippina. His praises appeared affecting and
+sincere, since he pledged them, so to speak, on the head of his son,
+who was still of tender age.</p>
+
+<p>“Nero is chaste, modest, of a kindly disposition, and religious. My
+little Lucan, who is dearer to me than my eyes, was his play- and
+school-mate. Together they practised declamation in the Greek and Latin
+languages. Together they attempted to indite verse. Never did Nero, in
+the course of these contests of skill at versification, manifest the
+slightest symptom of jealousy. Quite the contrary, he enjoyed praising
+his rival’s verses, which, in spite of his tender age, revealed traces
+here and there of a consuming energy. He sometimes seemed happy to be
+surpassed by the nephew of his teacher. Such was the charming modesty
+of the prince of youth! Poets will some day compare the friendship<a class="pagenum" name="Page_54" id="Page_54" title="54"> </a> of
+Nero and Lucan with that of Euryalus and Nisus.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nero,” the proconsul went on to say, “displays with the ardour of
+youth a gentle and merciful spirit. Time will but strengthen such
+virtues.</p>
+
+<p>“Claudius, when adopting him, has wisely acquiesced in the hope
+expressed by the Senate and the wish of the people. In so doing, he has
+removed from the Imperial succession a child overwhelmed by the shame
+of his mother, and has now, by giving Octavia to Nero, secured the
+accession of a youthful Cæsar whom Rome will delight in. The respectful
+son of an honoured mother, the zealous disciple of a philosopher, Nero,
+whose adolescence is illumined with the most agreeable qualities, Nero,
+our hope and the hope of the world, will remember, when clad in purple,
+the teachings of the Portico, and will rule the universe with justice
+and moderation.”</p>
+
+<p>“We welcome the omen,” remarked Lollius. “May an era of happiness dawn
+upon the human race!”</p>
+
+<p>“’Tis difficult to predict the future,” said Gallio. “Still, we
+experience no doubts regarding the eternity of the City. The oracles
+have promised Rome an empire without end, and it would be sacrilegious
+not to put our faith in the gods. Shall I reveal to you my fondest
+hope? I joyfully expect the time when peace will reign for ever on the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_55" id="Page_55" title="55"> </a>
+earth, following upon the chastising of the Parthians. Yes indeed, we
+may, without fear of deceiving ourselves, herald the end of war so
+hated by mothers. Who is there to disturb the Roman peace henceforth?
+Our eagles have spread to the confines of the universe. All the nations
+have experienced our strength and our mercy. The Arab, the Sabæan,
+the dweller on the slopes of the Hæmus, the Sarmatian who quenches
+his thirst with the blood of his steed, the Sygambri of the curly
+locks, the woolly-headed Ethiopian, all come in hordes to worship Rome
+their protectress. Whence would new barbarians spring? Is it likely
+that the icy plains of the North or the burning sands of Libya hold
+in store enemies of the Roman nation? All Barbarians, won over to
+our friendship, will lay down their arms, and Rome, the white-haired
+great-grandmother, tranquil in her old age, will see the nations
+respectfully grouped about her as her adopted children, dwelling in
+harmony and love.”</p>
+
+<p>All signified their approval of the foregoing sentiments, excepting
+Cassius, who shook his head in disagreement.</p>
+
+<p>He felt a pride in his military ancestry while the glory of arms, so
+greatly extolled by poets and rhetors, kindled his enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>“I doubt, my friend Gallio,” he commented,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_56" id="Page_56" title="56"> </a> “that nations will ever
+cease to hate and fear one another. To tell the truth, I should not
+desire such a consummation. Did war cease, what would become of
+strength of character, grandeur of soul, and love of country? Courage
+and devotion would be virtues out of date.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rest assured, Lucius,” said Gallio, “that when men shall cease to
+conquer one another, they will strive to subdue their own selves. That
+is the most virtuous attempt they can make, and the most noble use
+to which they can put their bravery and magnanimity. Yes indeed, the
+august mother whose wrinkles and whose hairs, blanched by centuries, we
+worship, Rome, will establish universal peace. Then shall the enjoyment
+of life be realised. Life under certain conditions is worth living.
+Life is a tiny flame between two infinite shadows; ’tis our share of
+the divine essence. During the term of his life, a man is similar to
+the gods.”</p>
+
+<p>While Gallio was thus discoursing, a dove perched itself on the
+shoulder of the Venus, whose marble contours gleamed among the myrtles.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear Gallio,” said Lollius with a smile, “the bird of Aphrodite
+takes delight in thy words. They are gentle and full of gracefulness.”</p>
+
+<p>A slave approached, bearing cool wine, and the friends of the proconsul
+discoursed of the gods. Apollodorus was of opinion that it was not easy
+to<a class="pagenum" name="Page_57" id="Page_57" title="57"> </a> grasp their nature. Lollius doubted their very existence.</p>
+
+<p>“When thunder peals,” he said, “it all depends upon the philosopher
+whether it is the cloud or the god who has thundered.”</p>
+
+<p>Cassius, however, did not countenance such thoughtless arguments. He
+believed in the gods of the Republic. While entertaining doubts as to
+the extent of their providence, he asserted their existence, as he
+did not wish to differ from humanity on an essential point. And to
+support his belief in the faith of his ancestors, he had recourse to an
+argument he had learnt from the Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>“The gods exist,” he said. “Men have formed their idea of what they are
+like. Now, it is impossible to conceive an image not based on reality.
+How would it be possible to see Minerva, Neptune, and Mercury, were
+there neither Mercury, nor Neptune, nor Minerva?”</p>
+
+<p>“You have convinced me,” said Lollius mockingly. “The old woman who
+sells honey-cakes in the Forum, outside the basilica, has seen the
+god Typhon, he with the shaggy head of an ass, and a monster belly.
+He threw her on her back, threw her clothes over her ears, chastised
+her while keeping time to each resounding blow, and left her for dead,
+after polluting her in a disgusting fashion. She has herself told how,
+even as Antiope, she had<a class="pagenum" name="Page_58" id="Page_58" title="58"> </a> been favoured with the visit of an immortal
+god. It is certain that the god Typhon exists, since he committed an
+outrage on an old cake-selling hag.”</p>
+
+<p>“In spite of thy mockery, Marcus, I do not doubt the existence of the
+gods,” resumed Cassius. “And I believe that they enjoy a human form,
+since it is under that form that they always show themselves to us,
+whether we slumber or whether we are awake.”</p>
+
+<p>“It would be better,” remarked Apollodorus, “to say that men possess
+the divine form, since the gods existed before them.”</p>
+
+<p>“My dear Apollodorus,” exclaimed Lollius. “You forget that Diana was
+first worshipped under the form of a tree, and that several important
+gods have the shape of an unhewn stone. Cybele is represented, not as a
+woman should be, with two breasts, but with several teats like a bitch
+or a sow. The sun is a god, but being too hot to assume the human form,
+he has taken the shape of a ball; he is a round god.”</p>
+
+<p>Annæus Mela gently censured this academic jesting.</p>
+
+<p>“All that is related about the gods,” he said, “should not be taken
+literally. The vulgar herd calls wheat Ceres, and wine Bacchus. But
+where is to be found the man crazy enough to believe that he drinks and
+eats a god? Let us indulge in a more exalted knowledge of the divine
+nature. The<a class="pagenum" name="Page_59" id="Page_59" title="59"> </a> gods are but the several parts of nature, and they are all
+lost in one god, who is nature in its entirety.”</p>
+
+<p>The proconsul signified his approval of the words of his brother, and
+speaking in a serious strain, defined the attributes of divinity.</p>
+
+<p>“God is the soul of the world; this soul spreads to all parts of the
+universe, infusing motion and life into it. This soul, a creative
+flame, penetrating the inert mass of matter, gave shape to the world,
+governing and preserving it. Divinity, an active force, is essentially
+good. The matter which it has put to good use, being inert and passive,
+is bad in certain of its parts. God has been powerless to change its
+nature. This explains the origin of the evil in the world. Our souls
+are particles of the divine fire into which they will some day be
+merged. Consequently, God is within us and he dwells in particular in
+the virtuous man whose soul is not hampered with gross materialism.
+This wise man, in whom God dwells, is God’s equal. He should not
+implore him, but contain him within himself. And what madness it
+is to pray to God! What an act of impiety it is to petition him!
+It is tantamount to believing that it is possible to enlighten his
+intelligence, to change his heart, and to persuade him to mend his
+behaviour. It is displaying ignorance of the necessity governing his
+immutable<a class="pagenum" name="Page_60" id="Page_60" title="60"> </a> wisdom. He is subjected to Destiny, or, to be more accurate,
+he is Destiny. His ways are laws to which he is like ourselves
+subjected. For once that he commands, he obeys for ever. Free and
+powerful in his submission, it is to himself that he shows obedience.
+All the happenings in the world are the manifestations of sovereign
+intentions originating with himself. His helplessness against himself
+is infinite.”</p>
+
+<p>Gallio’s speech was applauded by his hearers. Apollodorus, however,
+craved permission to submit a few objections.</p>
+
+<p>“You are right, Gallio,” he said, “when you believe that Jupiter is
+at the mercy of Anankè and I hold with you that Anankè is the first
+among the immortal goddesses. But it appears to me that your god,
+above all admirable in his compass and his perpetuity, had better
+intentions than luck when he created the world, since he found nothing
+better wherewith to knead it than a rebellious and ingrate substance,
+and that the material betrays the workman. I cannot but feel for him
+over his discomfiture. The potters of Athens are more fortunate. They
+procure, for the purpose of making vases, a delicate and plastic clay
+which readily takes and preserves the contours they give it. Hence do
+their goblets and amphoræ present an agreeable form. Their curves are
+graceful, and the painter limns with ease figures<a class="pagenum" name="Page_61" id="Page_61" title="61"> </a> pleasing to the
+eye, such as old Silenus bestriding his ass, the toilet of Aphrodite,
+and the chaste Amazons. When I come to think of it, Gallio, I am of
+the opinion that if your god was less fortunate than the potters of
+Athens, ’tis for the reason that he lacked wisdom and that he was a
+poor artisan. The material at his disposal was not of the best. Still,
+it was not devoid of all serviceable properties, as you have yourself
+confessed. Nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad. A thing may be
+bad if put to a certain use, while it may be excellent in some other.
+It would be waste of time to plant olive-trees in the clay used in
+fashioning amphoræ. The tree of Pallas would not grow in the light and
+pure soil of which are made the beautiful vases which our victorious
+athletes receive, blushing the while with pride and modesty. It seems
+to me, Gallio, that your god, when fashioning the world with a material
+that was not suitable for the undertaking, was guilty of the mistake
+which a vine-dresser of Megara would be committing, were he to plant
+a vine in modelling clay, or were some worker in ceramics to select
+for the making of amphoræ the stony soil which affords nutriment to
+the clusters of the grape-vine. Your god, you say, made the universe.
+He ought certainly to have given form to some other thing, in order
+to make suitable use of his material. Since the substance, as<a class="pagenum" name="Page_62" id="Page_62" title="62"> </a> you
+assert, proved rebellious to him, either through its inherent inertia,
+or through some other bad quality, should he have persisted in putting
+it to a use it could not respond to, and, as the saying goes, carve
+his bow out of a cypress? The secret of industry does not consist in
+accomplishing much, but in doing good work. Why did he not content
+himself with creating some small thing, say a gnat, or a drop of water,
+but finish it to perfection?</p>
+
+<p>“I might add further remarks about your god, Gallio, and ask you, for
+instance, if you do not entertain a fear that from his constant rubbing
+against matter, he may wear out, just as a millstone becomes worn in
+the long run in the course of grinding wheat. But such questions are
+not to be solved in a hurry, and the time of a proconsul is precious.
+Permit me at least to say to you that you are not justified in
+believing that your god rules and preserves the world, since, according
+to your own admission, he deprived himself of intelligence after having
+become acquainted with all things; of will-power, after having willed
+all things, and of power, following upon his ability to do what he
+saw fit. Herein again lay, on his part, a serious mistake, for he was
+thus an instrument in depriving himself of the means of correcting his
+imperfect work. So far as I am concerned, I am inclined to believe that
+god is in reality, not the one you have conceived, but<a class="pagenum" name="Page_63" id="Page_63" title="63"> </a> indeed the
+matter he discovered on a certain day, and which the Greeks have styled
+chaos. You are mistaken in your belief that matter is inert. It is ever
+in motion, and its perpetual activity keeps life a-going throughout the
+universe.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus spake the philosopher Apollodorus. Gallio, who had listened to
+his speech with some degree of impatience, denied that he had fallen a
+victim to the mistakes and contradictions with which the Greek charged
+him. But he failed in refuting successfully the arguments of his
+opponent, as his intellect was not a subtle one and because he demanded
+principally of philosophy the means of rendering men virtuous, and
+because he was interested in useful truths only.</p>
+
+<p>“Try to grasp, Apollodorus,” he said, “that God is none other than
+nature. Nature and himself are one. God and Nature are the two names of
+a single being, just as Novatus and Gallio designate one and the same
+man. God, if you prefer, is divine reason commingling with the earth.
+You need have no fear that he will wear out through this amalgamation,
+since his <a name="tenuous" id="tenuous"></a><ins title="Original has tenous">tenuous</ins> substance participates of the fire which
+consumes all matter while remaining unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>“But should, nevertheless,” proceeded Gallio, “my doctrine embrace
+ill-assorted ideas, do not blame me for it, my dear Apollodorus, but
+rather<a class="pagenum" name="Page_64" id="Page_64" title="64"> </a> give me praise because I suffer a few contradictions to find
+a place in my mind. Were I not conciliatory as regards my own ideas,
+were I to confer upon a single system an exclusive preference, I could
+no longer tolerate the freedom of every opinion; having destroyed my
+own freedom of thought, I could not readily tolerate it in the case
+of others, and I should forfeit the respect due to every doctrine
+established or professed by a sincere man. The gods forbid that I
+should see my opinion prevail to the exclusion of any other, and
+exercise an absolute sway on other minds. Conjure up a picture, my
+dear friends, of the state of manners and morals, were a sufficient
+number of men firmly to believe that they were the sole possessors
+of the truth, if, by some impossible chance, they were thoroughly
+agreed as to that truth. A too narrow piety among the Athenians, who
+are nevertheless full of wisdom and of doubt, was the cause of the
+banishment of Anaxagoras and of the death of Socrates. What would
+happen were millions of men enslaved by one solitary idea concerning
+the nature of the gods? The genius of the Greeks and the prudence of
+our ancestors made allowance for doubt, and tolerated the worship of
+Jupiter under several names. No sooner should a powerful sect come on
+this ailing earth and proclaim that Jupiter has one name only, than
+blood would flow the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_65" id="Page_65" title="65"> </a> world over, and no longer would there be but
+one Caius whose madness should threaten the human race with death.
+All the men of such a sect would be so many Caiuses. They would
+<a name="face" id="face"></a><ins title="Original has facedeath">face death</ins> for a name. For a name, they would kill, since
+it is rather in the nature of men to kill than to die on behalf of
+what seems to them true and most excellent. Hence it is better to base
+public order on the diversity of opinions, than to seek to establish
+it on a universal consent to one and the same belief. A like unanimous
+consent could never be realised, and in seeking to obtain it, men would
+become stupid and maddened. For, indeed, the most patent truth is but a
+vain jangle of words to the men on whom it is attempted to impose it.
+You would compel me to believe a thing which you understand, but which
+passes my understanding. You would thus be forcing upon me not a thing
+that is intelligible, but one that is incomprehensible. And I am nearer
+you when holding a different belief, one which I understand. For, in
+that case, both of us are making use of our reason, and we both possess
+an intelligent comprehension of our own belief.”</p>
+
+<p>“Enough of all this,” remarked Lollius. “Educated men will never
+combine for the purpose of stifling all other doctrines to the
+advantage of a single one. As to the vulgar herd, who cares to teach<a class="pagenum" name="Page_66" id="Page_66" title="66"> </a>
+it that Jupiter has six hundred names, or a single one?”</p>
+
+<p>Cassius, slow of utterance, and of a serious turn of mind, spoke next.</p>
+
+<p>“Beware, Gallio,” he said, “lest the existence of God, such as
+expounded by you, be not in contradiction with the beliefs of our
+forefathers. It matters little, after all, whether your arguments are
+better or worse than those of Apollodorus. What we have to consider
+is the fatherland. To its religion does Rome owe her virtues and her
+power. To destroy our gods is to compass our own destruction.”</p>
+
+<p>“You need not fear, my friend,” rejoined Gallio with some show of
+animation, “have no fear, I repeat, that I deny in an insolent spirit
+the heavenly protectors of the Empire. The only divinity which the
+philosophers acknowledge embodies within itself all the gods, just as
+humanity embraces all men. The gods whose worship was instituted by the
+wisdom of our forefathers, Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Quirinus, and
+Hercules, constitute the most august parts of the universal providence,
+and no less than the whole do these parts exist. No, indeed, I am not
+an impious man, nor inimical to the laws. None respects the sacred
+things more than Gallio.”</p>
+
+<p>No one seemed disposed to dispute these ideas.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_67" id="Page_67" title="67"> </a> Thereupon Lollius,
+bringing the conversation back to its starting-point, remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“We have been seeking to penetrate the veil of the future. What are
+man’s destinies, according to you, my friends, after his demise?”</p>
+
+<p>In reply to this question, Annæus Mela promised immortality to heroes
+and wise men, while denying it to the common of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>“It passes belief,” he said, “that misers, gluttons, and mean-spirited
+men should possess an immortal soul. Could so singular a privilege
+be the portion of coarse and silly oafs? I cannot entertain such a
+thought. It would be an insult to the majority of the gods to believe
+that they have decreed the immortality of the boor who wots only of his
+goats and cheeses, or of the freedman, richer than Crœsus, who had no
+other cares in the world than to check the accounts of his stewards.
+Why, good gods, should they be provided with a soul? What sort of a
+figure would they present among heroes and wise men in the Elysian
+fields? These wretches, like so many others here below, are incapable
+of realising humanity’s short-spanned life. How could they realise a
+life of longer duration? Vulgar souls are snuffed out at the hour of
+death, or they may for a while whirl about our globe, to vanish in the
+dense strata of the atmosphere. Virtue only, by making man the equal of
+the gods, makes them<a class="pagenum" name="Page_68" id="Page_68" title="68"> </a> participate in their immortality. To quote the
+poet:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“‘Illustrious virtue never descends into the Stygian shades.
+Lead a hero’s life, and the fates will not consign thee to the
+pitiless river of forgetfulness. When comes thy last day, glory
+will open to thee the path of heaven.’</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>“Let us realise our condition. We must all die, and all that we are
+must die. The man of shining virtue simply escapes the common destiny
+by becoming god, and by obtaining his admission into Olympus among the
+Heroes and the Gods.”</p>
+
+<p>“But he is not conscious of his own apotheosis,” said Marcus Lollius.
+“There does not exist upon earth a slave or a barbarian who is not
+aware that Augustus is a god. But Augustus knows it not. Hence it is
+that our Cæsars journey reluctantly towards the constellations, and
+even now we see Claudius near with blanched face these shadowy honours.”</p>
+
+<p>Gallio shook his head, and remarked, “The poet Euripides has said:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“‘We love the life which is revealed unto us upon earth, since
+we know of no other.’</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>“Everything that is related concerning the dead is open to doubt, and
+is bound up with fables and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_69" id="Page_69" title="69"> </a> falsehoods. Nevertheless, I believe that
+virtuous men attain an immortality of which they are fully cognisant.
+Let it be clearly understood that they achieve it by their own efforts,
+and not as a recompense conferred by the gods. By what right should
+the immortal gods degrade a virtuous man to the extent of rewarding
+him? The leading of a blameless life is its own reward, and no prize is
+there worthy of virtue, which is its own reward. Let us leave to vulgar
+souls, that they may thereby sustain their wretched fortitude, the
+dread of punishment, and the hope of a reward. Let us love virtue for
+its own sake. Gallio, if what the poets tell of the infernal regions
+be true, if after your death you are arraigned before the tribunal of
+Minos, you may say to him: “Minos shall not judge me. By my actions
+have I been judged.””</p>
+
+<p>“How,” inquired Apollodorus the philosopher, “can the gods give to men
+an immortality they themselves do not enjoy?”</p>
+
+<p>Apollodorus, indeed, did not believe in the immortality of the gods, or
+rather that their sway over the world should be exercised for all time.</p>
+
+<p>He proceeded to develop the reasons for his belief.</p>
+
+<p>“The reign of Jupiter,” he said, “began after the Golden Age. We know
+through the traditions<a class="pagenum" name="Page_70" id="Page_70" title="70"> </a> preserved for us by the poets that the son of
+Saturn succeeded to his father in the governing of the world. Now,
+everything that had a beginning must have an end. It is foolish to
+suppose that anything finite in one part can be infinite in another. It
+would then become necessary to call it finite and infinite as a whole,
+which would be absurd. Anything possessed of an extreme point can be
+measured from that point itself, and could not in any way cease to be
+measured at any point of its extent, without changing its nature, and
+the proper of what is measurable is to be comprised between two extreme
+points. We may therefore make up our minds that the reign of Jupiter
+will end just as did that of Saturn. As Æschylus has said:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“‘Jupiter is subordinate to Anankè. He cannot escape his fate.’”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Gallio thought the same, for reasons derived from the observation of
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>“I consider with you, Apollodorus, that the reigns of the gods are
+not immortal, and the observation of the celestial phenomena inclines
+me to this belief. The heavens, as well as the earth, are subject
+to corruption, and the divine palaces, liable to ruin just as the
+dwellings of mankind, crumble under the weight of the centuries. I have
+seen stones fall from the aerial regions. They<a class="pagenum" name="Page_71" id="Page_71" title="71"> </a> were blackened and
+corroded by fire, and bore testimony to a celestial conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>“The bodies of the gods, Apollodorus, are not any more exempt from
+injury than their dwellings. If it be true, as Homer teaches, that the
+gods, inhabitants of Olympus, impregnate the flanks of goddesses and
+mortal women, it is assuredly because they are not themselves immortal,
+in spite of their life’s span being greater than that of mankind,
+and hence it is patent that fate subjects them to the necessity of
+transmitting a life which they may not enjoy for ever.</p>
+
+<p>“In truth,” said Lollius, “it is hardly to be conceived that immortals
+should produce children in the same way as human beings and animals,
+or even that they should possess organs adapted to such a purpose. But
+perhaps the loves of the gods owe their origin to the mendacity of the
+poets.”</p>
+
+<p>Apollodorus persisted in his assertion that the reign of Jupiter
+would some day cease, supporting his opinion with subtile reasons. He
+prophesied that Prometheus would succeed the son of Saturn.</p>
+
+<p>“Prometheus,” replied Gallio, “was set free by Hercules with the
+consent of Jupiter, and he enjoys in Olympus the happiness he owes to
+his foresight and to his love of mankind. Nothing will ever happen to
+change his happy fate.”</p>
+
+<p>Apollodorus asked him:</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_72" id="Page_72" title="72"> </a>
+“Who then, according to you, Gallio, shall inherit the thunder which
+sets the world a-quaking?”</p>
+
+<p>“Although it may seem audacious to answer this question,” replied
+Gallio, “I think I am competent to do so, and to name Jove’s successor.”</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, an officer of the basilica, whose duty it was to call
+cases, approached him, and informed him that some suitors were waiting
+for him in court.</p>
+
+<p>The proconsul asked if the matter was one of paramount importance.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a most petty case, Gallio,” replied the officer of the basilica.
+“A man from the harbour of Cenchreæ has just dragged a stranger before
+your tribunal. They are both Jews and of humble condition. They are
+<a name="quarrelling" id="quarrelling"></a><ins title="Original has quarelling">quarrelling</ins> over some barbarian custom or some gross
+superstition, as is the wont of Syrians. Here is the minute of their
+case. It is all Punic to the clerk who wrote it.</p>
+
+<p>“The plaintiff sets forth, Gallio, that he is the head of the assembly
+of the Jews or, as one says in Greek, of the synagogue, and he begs
+justice of you against a man from Tarsus, who, recently settled at
+Cenchreæ, goes every Saturday to the synagogue, for the purpose of
+speaking against the Jewish law. ‘It is a scandal and an abomination,
+which thou shalt put an end to,’ says the plaintiff, and he clamours
+for the integrity of the privileges belonging<a class="pagenum" name="Page_73" id="Page_73" title="73"> </a> to the children of
+Israel. The defendant claims for all those who believe his teachings
+adoption and incorporation into the family of a man named Abraham, and
+he threatens the plaintiff with the divine ire. You see, Gallio, that
+the case is a petty and ambiguous one. It rests with you to decide
+whether you will take the case yourself, or whether you will leave it
+to be judged by a lesser magistrate.”</p>
+
+<p>The proconsul’s friends begged him not to disturb himself for so
+miserable an affair.</p>
+
+<p>“I make it my duty,” he said in response to their prayers, “to follow
+in this respect the rules laid down by the divine Augustus. I must
+therefore try personally, not only important cases, but also smaller
+ones, when the jurisprudence concerning them has not been determined.
+Certain light cases recur daily and are of importance, if only for
+their frequency. It is meet that I should personally try one of each
+class. A judgment rendered by a proconsul serves as an example, and
+establishes a precedent in law.”</p>
+
+<p>“You deserve praise, Gallio,” said Lollius, “for the zeal you display
+in the fulfilment of your consular duties. But, acquainted as I am with
+your wisdom, I doubt whether it is agreeable for you to render justice.
+That which men honour with this title is really an administration of
+base<a class="pagenum" name="Page_74" id="Page_74" title="74"> </a> prudence and of cruel revenge. Human laws are the daughters of
+fear and anger.”</p>
+
+<p>Gallio protested feebly against this definition. He did not admit that
+human laws bore the character of real justice, saying:</p>
+
+<p>“The punishment of crime consists in its commission. The penalty
+added thereto by the laws is superfluous, and does not fit the crime.
+However, since through the fault of mankind laws there are, we should
+apply them equitably.”</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon he told the officer of the court that he would proceed to the
+tribunal very shortly, and, turning towards his friends, he said:</p>
+
+<p>“To speak truly, I have a special reason for looking into this case
+with my own eyes. I must not neglect any opportunity of keeping an eye
+on these Jews of Cenchreæ, a turbulent, rancorous race, which shows
+contempt for the laws, and which it is not easy to hold in check. If
+ever the peace of Corinth should be troubled, it will be by them. This
+port, where all the ships of the East come to anchor, conceals amid a
+congested mass of warehouses and taverns, a countless horde of thieves,
+eunuchs, soothsayers, sorcerers, lepers, desecraters of graves, and
+assassins. It is the haunt of every abomination and of every form of
+superstition. Isis, Eschmoun, the Phœnician Venus, and the god of the
+Jews, are all worshipped there. I am<a class="pagenum" name="Page_75" id="Page_75" title="75"> </a> alarmed at seeing those unclean
+Jews multiply, rather in the way of fishes than in that of mankind.
+They swarm about the miry streets of the harbour like crabs under the
+rocks.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is more dreadful is that they infest Rome to a like extent,”
+exclaimed Lucius Cassius. “To great Pompey’s own door must be laid
+the crime of introducing this plague of leprosy into the City. He it
+was who committed the wrong of not treating as did our ancestors the
+prisoners he brought from Judæa for his triumphal entry into the City,
+and they have peopled the right bank of the Tiber with their base
+spawn. Dwelling about the base of the Janiculum, amid the tanneries,
+the gut-works, and the fermenting-troughs, in the suburbs whither
+flock all the abominations and horrors of the world, they earn their
+livelihood at the vilest of trades, unloading lighters, selling rags
+and refuse, and exchanging matches for broken glasses. Their women tell
+fortunes in the houses of the wealthy; their children beg from the
+frequenters of Egeria’s groves. As you rightly said, Gallio, hostile to
+the human race and to themselves, they are ever fomenting sedition. A
+few years back, the followers of a certain Chrestus or Cherestus raised
+bloody riots among the Jews. The Porta Portuensis was put to fire and
+sword, and Cæsar was compelled to exercise severe repression, in spite
+of his forbearance.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_76" id="Page_76" title="76"> </a> He expelled from Rome the leaders of the movement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Full well do I know it,” said Gallio. “Several of these exiles came to
+Cenchreæ, among others a Jew and a Jewess from the Pontus, who still
+dwell there, following some humble trade. I believe that they weave
+the coarse stuffs of Cilicia. I have not learnt anything noteworthy
+in regard to the partisans of Chrestus. As to Chrestus himself, I am
+ignorant of what has become of him, and whether he is still of this
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am as ignorant on this score as you are, Gallio,” resumed Lucius
+Cassius, “and no one will ever know it. These vile wretches do not so
+much as attain celebrity in the annals of crime. Moreover, there are so
+many slaves of the name of Chrestus that it would be no easy matter to
+distinguish a particular one amid the throng.</p>
+
+<p>“It is but a trifling matter that the Jews should cause tumult within
+the low purlieus where their number and their lowliness protect
+them from supervision. They swarm through the city, they ingratiate
+themselves into families, and are everywhere a source of trouble. They
+shout in the Forum on behalf of the agitators who pay them, and these
+despicable foreigners incite the citizens to a hatred of one another.
+Too long have we endured their presence in popular assemblages, and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_77" id="Page_77" title="77"> </a>
+for a long time now have public speakers avoided running counter to the
+opinion of these wretches, for fear of their insults. Obstinate in the
+observance of their barbarian law, they wish to subject others to it,
+and they find adepts among the Asiatics, and even among the Greeks.
+And, what is hardly to be credited, they impose their customs on the
+Latins themselves. There are, in the City, whole quarters where all the
+shops are closed on their Sabbath day. Oh the shame of Rome! And, while
+corrupting the lowly folk among whom they dwell, their kings, admitted
+into Cæsar’s palace, insolently practise their superstitions, and
+set to all citizens a detestable and noted example. Thus do the Jews
+inoculate Italy on all sides with an oriental venom.”</p>
+
+<p>Annæus Mela, who had travelled over the whole of the Roman world,
+sought to make his friends realise the extent of the evil they deplored.</p>
+
+<p>“The Jews corrupt the whole world,” he said. “There is not a Greek
+city, there are hardly any barbarian towns where work does not cease
+on the seventh day, where lamps are not lit, where their keeping of
+fast-days is not followed, and where the abstaining from the flesh of
+certain animals is not observed in imitation of them.</p>
+
+<p>“I have met in Alexandria an aged Jew not lacking in intelligence, who
+was even versed in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_78" id="Page_78" title="78"> </a> Greek literature. He rejoiced at the progress of
+his religion in the Empire. ‘In proportion to the knowledge foreigners
+acquire of our laws,’ he told me, ‘do they find them pleasant, and they
+conform readily to them, both Romans and Greeks, those who dwell on
+the mainland and the people of the isles, Eastern and Western nations,
+Europe and Asia.’ The ancient one spoke perhaps with some degree of
+exaggeration. Still one sees a number of Greeks yielding to the beliefs
+of the Jews.”</p>
+
+<p>Apollodorus sharply denied such to be the case.</p>
+
+<p>“The Greeks who judaise,” he said, “are not to be met with except
+amid the dregs of the populace, and among the barbarians wandering
+about Greece, as brigands and tramps. The followers of the Stammerer
+may, however, have persuaded some few ignorant Greeks, by inducing
+them to believe that the ideas of Plato are to be found in the Hebrew
+scriptures. Such is the lie which they strive to spread.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a fact,” replied Gallio, “that the Jews recognise an only,
+invisible, almighty god, who has created the earth. But they are far
+from worshipping him with wisdom. They publicly proclaim that this god
+is the enemy of all that is not Jewish, and that he will not tolerate
+in his temple either the effigies of the other gods, or the statue of
+Cæsar, or his own images. They regard as impious those who<a class="pagenum" name="Page_79" id="Page_79" title="79"> </a> fashion
+out of perishable matter a god the image of man. Various reasons, some
+of them good and in harmony with the ideas which we conceive in regard
+to the divine providence, are adduced why this god should not be given
+expression to in marble or in bronze. But what can be thought, dear
+Apollodorus, of a god sufficiently inimical to the Republic that he
+will not admit in his sanctuary the statues of the Prince? How conceive
+a god who takes offence at the honours rendered to other gods? And
+what opinion can one have of a nation which credits its gods with like
+sentiments! The Jews look upon the gods of the Latins, Greeks and
+Barbarians as hostile gods, and they carry superstition to the point of
+believing that they possess a full and complete knowledge of God, one
+to which nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be subtracted.</p>
+
+<p>“As you are aware, my dear friends, it is not sufficient to tolerate
+every religion; we should honour them all, believe that all are sacred,
+that they are all coequal in the sincerity of those professing them,
+and that similar to arrows shot from various points towards the same
+goal, they all meet in the bosom of God. Alone the religion which only
+tolerates itself, cannot be endured. Were it to be permitted to spread,
+it would absorb all others. Nay, so unsociable a religion is not a
+religion, but<a class="pagenum" name="Page_80" id="Page_80" title="80"> </a> rather an abligion, and no longer a bond that unites
+pious men, but one severing that sacred bond. It is the most impious
+of things. Can, indeed, a greater insult be offered to the deity than
+to worship it under a particular form, while at one and the same time
+dooming it to execration under all the other forms it assumes in the
+eyes of men?</p>
+
+<p>“What! Because I sacrifice to Jupiter crowned with a bushel, I am
+to forbid a foreigner from sacrificing to a Jupiter whose head of
+hair, similar to the flower of the hyacinth, drops uncrowned over his
+shoulders; and that, impious man that I should be, I should still
+consider myself a worshipper of Jupiter! No, by all means no! The
+religious man bound to the immortal gods is equally bound to all men by
+the religion which embraces both the earth and the heavens. Odious is
+the error of the Jews who believe they are pious in that they worship
+their god alone!”</p>
+
+<p>“They suffer themselves to be circumcised in his honour,” spoke Annæus
+Mela. “In order that this mutilation should not be noticed, it is
+necessary, when frequenting the public baths, for them to conceal that
+which should neither be made a display of, nor covered as a thing of
+shame. For it is alike ridiculous for a man to pride himself on, or
+to be ashamed of, what he shares in common with all men. We have good
+cause to dread, my friends, the progress<a class="pagenum" name="Page_81" id="Page_81" title="81"> </a> of Judaic customs in the
+Empire. There is, however, no cause to fear that Romans and Greeks will
+adopt circumcision. It passes belief that this custom is likely to make
+its way among the Barbarians who, however, would feel the disgrace of
+it to a lesser degree, since they are, for the greater part, absurd
+enough to reckon as disgraceful for a man to appear before his fellow
+men in a state of nudity.”</p>
+
+<p>“While I think of it!” exclaimed Lollius. “When our gentle Canidia,
+the flower of the matrons of the Esquiline, sends her beautiful slaves
+to the hot baths, she compels them to wear drawers, as she grudges
+everybody even a view of what is most dear to her about their bodies.
+By Pollux, she will be the cause of their being taken for Jews, an
+insulting supposition, even for a slave.”</p>
+
+<p>Lucius Cassius resumed, revealing the irritation which consumed him:</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot say whether the Jewish folly will overtake the whole world.
+But it is past endurance that this madness should spread among the
+ignorant, that it should be tolerated in the Empire, that this fœtid
+race, which has descended to every form of turpitude, absurd and
+sordid in its manners and customs, impious and villainous in its laws,
+and execrated by the immortal gods, should be suffered to exist. The
+obscene Syrian is corrupting the City<a class="pagenum" name="Page_82" id="Page_82" title="82"> </a> of Rome. We have cast aside with
+contempt our ancient usages, and the salutary methods of discipline
+of our ancestors. We no longer serve these masters of the earth, who
+conquered it for us. Which of us still believes in the haruspices? Who
+is there with any respect for the augurs? Who shows reverence to Mars
+and the divine Twins? Oh the sad neglect of our religious duties! Italy
+has repudiated her indigenous gods, and her tutelary genii. She is
+henceforth on all sides at the mercy of foreign superstitions, and is
+handed over defenceless to the impure horde of oriental priests. Alas,
+did Rome conquer the world only to be conquered by the Jews? Warnings
+have assuredly not been lacking. The overflowing of the Tiber and the
+grain famine are certainly not doubtful manifestations of the divine
+ire. No day passes without its sinister presage. The earth quakes, the
+sun is veiled, while lightning flashes in a clear sky. Wonders follow
+upon wonders. Birds of ill omen have been seen to perch on the summit
+of the Capitol. An ox has been heard to speak on the Etruscan shore.
+Women have brought forth monsters; a wailing voice has sounded amid the
+recreations of the theatre. The statue of Victory has dropped the reins
+of her chariot.”</p>
+
+<p>“The hosts of the celestial palaces,” remarked Lollius, “have strange
+ways of making themselves<a class="pagenum" name="Page_83" id="Page_83" title="83"> </a> heard. If they desire a little more incense,
+or sigh for a few more fat offerings, let them say so plainly, instead
+of expressing their wishes by means of thunder, clouds, crows, bronze
+statues, and two-headed children. Moreover, you must admit, Lucius,
+theirs is a far too one-sided part when they presage the evils
+threatening us, since, in the natural course of things, not a day goes
+by but what brings some individual or public misfortune.”</p>
+
+<p>Gallio exhibited distress at the sorrows of Cassius.</p>
+
+<p>“Claudius,” he remarked, “Claudius, although he is always dozing, has
+deeply felt this great peril. He has complained to the Senate of the
+contempt into which ancient usages have been suffered to fall. Alarmed
+at the progress of foreign superstitions, the Senate has, on his
+recommendation, re-established haruspices. But it is not sufficient
+that the observance of the ceremonial rites of worship should be
+restored; rather is it necessary once more to instil into men’s hearts
+their primitive purity. The souls of virtuous men constitute the proper
+shrine of the gods in this world. Give a home within your hearts to
+past virtues once more, simplicity, good faith, love of the public
+welfare, and the gods will immediately re-enter them. You shall then
+yourselves be temples and altars.”</p>
+
+<p>He spoke, and, taking leave of his friends, entered<a class="pagenum" name="Page_84" id="Page_84" title="84"> </a> his litter, which,
+for some little time past, had been awaiting him near a clump of
+myrtle-bushes to convey him to the tribunal.</p>
+
+<p>His friends had risen from their seats, and leaving the grounds,
+followed leisurely behind him under a double portico, so disposed as to
+afford shadow at all hours of the day, and leading from the walls of
+the villa to the basilica where the proconsul dispensed justice.</p>
+
+<p>By the way, Lucius Cassius expressed to Mela his regret at the oblivion
+into which the ancient methods of discipline had fallen.</p>
+
+<p>Marcus Lollius, placing a hand on the shoulder of Apollodorus, said:</p>
+
+<p>“It seems to me that neither our gentle Gallio nor Mela, nor even
+Cassius, have stated their reasons for their deep hatred of the Jews.
+I think I know, and I am going to tell you, most dear Apollodorus.
+The Romans who offer up to the gods a white sow ornamented with white
+bands, execrate the Jews who refuse to partake of pork. It is not in
+vain that the fates sent to the pious Æneas a white female boar as a
+presage. Had the gods not studded with oaks the wild realms of Evander
+and Turnus, Rome would not be to-day the mistress of the world. The
+acorns of Latium fattened the swine whose flesh has alone appeased
+the insatiable hunger of the magnanimous descendants of Remus. Our
+Italians, whose<a class="pagenum" name="Page_85" id="Page_85" title="85"> </a> bodies are built on boars and pigs, feel offended
+at the proud abstinence of the Jews, who persist in casting aside as
+unclean victuals the fat sounders, beloved of old Cato, which furnish
+food to the masters of the Universe.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus discoursing pleasantly, and enjoying the kindly shade, the four
+friends reached the furthermost end of the portico, when of a sudden
+the Forum appeared before them in a glitter of light.</p>
+
+<p>At that early hour, it was all astir with the coming and going of
+noisy crowds. In the centre of the square stood a bronze Minerva on a
+pedestal on which were sculptured the Muses, and to the right and to
+the left stood a Mercury and a bronze Apollo, the work of Hermogenes of
+Cythera. A Neptune with a green beard arose from the centre of a basin.
+At the feet of the god, a dolphin vomited forth water.</p>
+
+<p>The Forum was surrounded in all directions by monuments, the
+high columns and the arches of which revealed the Roman style of
+architecture. Facing the portico by way of which Mela and his friends
+had come, the Propylæ, surmounted by two gilded chariots, formed the
+boundary of the public square, and led, by way of marble steps, to the
+broad and straight road of the harbour of Lechæum. On either side of
+these heroic gates rose in kingly fashion the painted pediments of the
+sanctuaries, the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_86" id="Page_86" title="86"> </a> Pantheon, and the temple of Artemis of Ephesus. The
+temple of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, dominated the Forum, and
+looked upon the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Between it and the basilica ran an insignificant little street. The
+building rose over two stories of arcades supported by pillars flanked
+with Doric half-columns forming a square. The Roman style, which
+stamped its character upon all the other buildings of the city, was
+patent. There remained of the pristine Corinth nothing but the calcined
+ruins of an old temple.</p>
+
+<p>The lower arcades of the basilica were open and served as shops
+to sellers of fruit, vegetables, oil, wine and fried foods, to
+bird-fanciers, jewellers, booksellers, and barbers. Money-changers sat
+at little tables laden with gold and silver coins. From the gloomy
+hollow of these stalls emerged shouts, laughter, hailings, the noise
+of disputes, and pungent odours. On the marble steps, wherever their
+slabs were tinted blue by the shade, loafers shook dice or tossed
+knuckle-bones, suitors paced to and fro with anxious mien, sailors
+gravely looked for the pleasures upon which they should squander
+their wages, while quidnuncs read news from Rome written for them
+by frivolous Greeks. Blended with this crowd of Corinthians and
+foreigners, numerous blind beggars persistently obtruded themselves, as
+well as callow and rouged youths, matchsellers and crippled sailors<a class="pagenum" name="Page_87" id="Page_87" title="87"> </a>
+from whose necks depended a picture of the wreck of their ships. Doves
+flew in flocks from the roof of the basilica down to the large open
+spaces on which the sun shone, and picked up grain between the cracks
+of the heated flagstones.</p>
+
+<p>A girl of twelve, dark and velvety as a pansy of Xanthus, placed on
+the ground her little brother, as yet unable to walk, put beside him a
+chipped bowl filled with porridge and a wooden spoon, saying to him:</p>
+
+<p>“Eat, Comatas, eat and keep quiet, or that red horse will have you.”</p>
+
+<p>Then, holding an obolus in her hand, she ran towards the fish-dealer,
+whose wrinkled face and naked breast, the colour of saffron, appeared
+amid baskets lined with seaweed.</p>
+
+<p>While she was thus engaged, a dove hovering about the little Comatas
+got its talons entangled in the child’s locks. The boy began to cry,
+and to call his sister to his help, screaming in a voice choked with
+sobs:</p>
+
+<p>“Joessa! Joessa!”</p>
+
+<p>But Joessa heard him not. She was rummaging in the old man’s baskets,
+amid the fish and the shell-fish, for something that would improve the
+taste of her stale bread. Naturally she did not pick out a peacock-fish
+or a smaris, whose flesh is most delicate, but which cost money. She
+brought<a class="pagenum" name="Page_88" id="Page_88" title="88"> </a> away in the hollow of her gown, which she had tucked up, three
+handfuls of sea-urchins and sticklebacks.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile little Comatas, his mouth wide open, and drinking his own
+tears, was still bawling:</p>
+
+<p>“Joessa! Joessa!”</p>
+
+<p>Unlike Jove’s eagle, the bird of Venus did not carry off little Comatas
+into the glorious skies. It left him on the earth, taking with it in
+its flight, between its pink talons, three golden hairs from his matted
+locks.</p>
+
+<p>The child, with cheeks glistening with tears and begrimed with dust,
+clenching his wooden spoon in his tiny fists, was sobbing beside his
+overturned bowl.</p>
+
+<p>Annæus Mela, followed by his three friends, had reached the top of the
+basilica’s steps. Alike heedless of the noise and stir of the idle
+multitude, he was imparting information to Cassius in regard to the
+future renovation of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>“On a day determined by the gods,” he said, “the things existing
+to-day, whose order and disposition claim our attention, will be
+destroyed. Stars will clash with stars, all matters composing the
+earth, the air, and the waters will be consumed in one conflagration.
+Human souls, imperceptible <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">débris</i> amid the universal destruction,
+will be resolved anew into their primitive elements. An entirely new
+world....”</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_89" id="Page_89" title="89"> </a>
+As he uttered the words, Annæus Mela stumbled against a sleeper
+stretched out in the shade. It was an old man who had artistically
+gathered about his dust-covered body the ragged remnants of his cloak.
+His wallet, his sandals, and his stick lay beside him.</p>
+
+<p>The proconsul’s brother, ever courteous and kindly, even to men of the
+lowliest class, was about to apologise, but the recumbent individual
+did not allow him time to do so.</p>
+
+<p>“Try and see where you put your feet, you brute,” he exclaimed, “and
+give alms to the philosopher Posocharis.”</p>
+
+<p>“I perceive a wallet and a stick,” smilingly replied the Roman, “but so
+far I do not see any philosopher.”</p>
+
+<p>Just as he was about to toss a piece of silver to Posocharis,
+Apollodorus stayed his hand, saying:</p>
+
+<p>“Do not give him anything, Annæus. It is not a philosopher; nay, not
+even a man.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I am one,” replied Mela, “if I give him money, and he is a man if
+he takes this coin. For, alone among all animals, man does both these
+things. And can you not see that for the sake of a small coin I satisfy
+myself that I am a better man than he? Your master teaches that he who
+gives is better than he who receives.”</p>
+
+<p>Posocharis took the coin. Then he hurled coarse invectives at Annæus
+Mela and his companions,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_90" id="Page_90" title="90"> </a> stigmatising them as arrogant and as
+debauchees, and referring them to the jugglers and harlots who walked
+past them with undulating hips. Then, baring to the navel his hairy
+body, and drawing over his face his tattered cloak, he once more
+stretched himself out at full length on the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>“Would it not interest you,” asked Lollius of his companions, “to hear
+those Jews expound their dispute in the prætorium?”</p>
+
+<p>They replied that they entertained no such curiosity, preferring to
+stroll under the portico, while waiting for the proconsul, who would
+doubtless not be long in coming out.</p>
+
+<p>“I am with you, my friends,” said Lollius. “We shall not miss anything
+very interesting.”</p>
+
+<p>“Moreover,” he went on to say, “the Jews who have come from Cenchreæ to
+accompany the suitors are not all in the basilica. Here comes one who
+is recognisable by his beaked nose and his forked beard. He is in as
+fine a state of frenzy as Pythia herself.”</p>
+
+<p>Lollius was pointing with both look and finger at a lean stranger,
+poorly clad, who was vociferating under the portico, in the midst of a
+railing mob.</p>
+
+<p>“Men of Corinth, you place a vain trust in your wisdom, which is naught
+but madness. You follow blindly the precepts of your philosophers who
+teach you death, and not life. You do not observe the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_91" id="Page_91" title="91"> </a> natural law, and
+in order to punish you, God has delivered you unto unnatural vices....”</p>
+
+<p>A sailor, who had just joined the group of spectators, recognised the
+man, for, with a shrug of the shoulders, he muttered:</p>
+
+<p>“Why, ’tis Stephanas, the Jew of Cenchreæ, who brings once more some
+extraordinary piece of news from his trip to the skies, into which he
+ascended, if we are to credit him.”</p>
+
+<p>And Stephanas was teaching the people.</p>
+
+<p>“The Christian is not bound by law and concupiscence. He is exempt from
+damnation through the mercy of God, who sent his only son to assume a
+sinful body, in order to destroy sin. But ye shall only be delivered
+if, breaking with the flesh, you live according to the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>“The Jews observe the laws, and believe that they are saved by their
+works. But it is their faith which saves them, and not their works. Of
+what use is it to them to be circumcised in fact, if their heart is
+uncircumcised?</p>
+
+<p>“Men of Corinth, glory in the faith, and ye shall be incorporated into
+the family of Abraham.”</p>
+
+<p>The mob was beginning to laugh and jeer at these obscure utterances.
+Still the Jew continued prophesying in hollow tones. He was announcing
+a great manifestation of wrath and the all-destroying fire which was to
+consume the earth.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_92" id="Page_92" title="92"> </a>
+“And these things shall come to pass in my lifetime,” he cried, “and
+I shall witness them with mine own eyes. The hour has come for us to
+awaken from our sleep. The night has passed, and the day is dawning.
+The Saints will rejoice in Heaven, and those who have not believed in
+Jesus crucified shall perish.”</p>
+
+<p>Then, promising the resurrection of the body, he invoked Anastasis,
+amid the jeers of the hilarious crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Just then, a leather-lunged man, Milo the baker, a member of the
+Corinthian Senate, who for some time past had been listening to the Jew
+with impatience, came up to him, took him by the arm, and shaking him
+roughly said:</p>
+
+<p>“Cease, you wretch, spouting idle words. All this is children’s fables
+and nonsense fit to capture a woman’s mind. How canst thou, on the
+strength of thy dreams, indulge in such foolery, casting aside all
+that is beautiful, and taking pleasure in what is evil only, without
+even deriving any advantage from thy hatred? Renounce your strange
+phantasies, your perverse designs, your gloomy forebodings, lest a god
+abandon you to the crows, to punish you for your imprecations against
+this city and the Empire.”</p>
+
+<p>The citizens applauded Milo’s speech.</p>
+
+<p>“He speaks truly,” they shouted. “Those<a class="pagenum" name="Page_93" id="Page_93" title="93"> </a> Syrians have but one design:
+they seek to weaken our fatherland. They are the enemies of Cæsar.”</p>
+
+<p>A number of them abstracted from the fruiterers’ stalls gourds and
+locust-beans, others picked up oyster-shells, and flung them at the
+apostle, who was still vaticinating.</p>
+
+<p>Thrown down the steps of the portico, he wended his way through the
+Forum, shouting, amid a storm of hooting, insults, and blows, pelted
+with dirt, bleeding, and half naked:</p>
+
+<p>“My Master has said it, we are the sweepings of the world.”</p>
+
+<p>And he exulted in his joy.</p>
+
+<p>The children pursued him on the Cenchreæ road, yelling.</p>
+
+<p>“Anastasis! Anastasis!”</p>
+
+<p>Posocharis was not sleeping. Hardly had the friends of the proconsul
+gone away, when he raised himself upon his elbow. Seated on a step,
+a short distance from him, the swarthy Joessa was crunching between
+her teeth the shell of a sea-urchin. The cynic hailed her and showed
+her the glittering piece of silver he had just received. Then, having
+readjusted his rags and tatters, he rose, slipped his feet into his
+sandals, picked up his stick and wallet, and went down the steps.
+Joessa went up to him, relieved him of his wallet full of holes, which
+she gravely placed on her shoulder, as if to carry it as an<a class="pagenum" name="Page_94" id="Page_94" title="94"> </a> offering
+to the august Cypris, and followed the old man.</p>
+
+<p>Apollodorus saw them taking the Cenchreæ road with the object of
+reaching the cemetery of the slaves, and the place of execution
+conspicuous from afar by the swarms of crows which hovered over the
+crosses. The philosopher and the young girl knew there a clump of
+arbutus always deserted, and favourable to dalliance with Eros.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of this, Apollodorus, pulling Mela by the flap of his
+toga, remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“Just look. No sooner has that cur received your alms than he decoys a
+child, in order to mate with her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Which goes to prove,” answered Mela, “that I gave money to the kind of
+man who knows full well what to do with it.”</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the brat Comatas, squatting on the heated flagstone and
+sucking his thumbs, was laughing at the sight of a pebble glistening in
+the sun.</p>
+
+<p>“Besides,” resumed Mela, “you must admit, Apollodorus, that the way
+in which Posocharis makes love is not a bit philosophical. The dog is
+assuredly wiser than our young debauchees of the Palatine, who love
+amid perfumes, tears, and laughter, with languor or with passion...”</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, a hoarse clamour arose in the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_95" id="Page_95" title="95"> </a> prætorium, deafening to the
+ears of the Greek and the three Romans.</p>
+
+<p>“By Pollux!” exclaimed Lollius, “the suitors whose case our friend
+Gallio is trying are shouting like dockers, and it seems to me that
+together with their growls a stench of sweat and onions reaches us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing is more true,” quoth Apollodorus. “But, were Posocharis a
+philosopher instead of the dog he is, far from sacrificing to the Venus
+of the cross-roads, he would flee from the whole breed of women, and
+attach himself solely to some youth, whose eternal comeliness he would
+contemplate merely as the expression of an inner beauty more noble and
+more precious.”</p>
+
+<p>“Love,” resumed Mela, “is an abject passion. It disturbs the reason,
+destroys noble impulses, and diverts the most elevated ideas to the
+vilest cares. It has no place in a sensible mind. As the poet Euripides
+teaches us....”</p>
+
+<p>Mela did not finish his sentence. Preceded by lictors, who pushed the
+crowd aside, the proconsul came out of the basilica, and went up to his
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>“I have not been away from you long,” he said. “The case which I was
+summoned to try was as meagre as could be, and ridiculous in the
+extreme. On entering the prætorium, I found it invaded by a motley
+crowd of the Jews who, in their sordid shops along the wharves of the
+harbour of Cenchreæ, sell<a class="pagenum" name="Page_96" id="Page_96" title="96"> </a> carpets, stuffs, and petty articles of
+silver and gold jewellery to the sailors. The atmosphere was filled
+with their shrill yelping, and with a pungent odour of goat. It was
+with difficulty that I could grasp the meaning of their words, and it
+cost me an effort to understand that one of those Jews, Sosthenes by
+name, who styled himself the chief of the synagogue, was charging with
+impiety another Jew, the latter, repulsively ugly, bandy-legged, and
+blear-eyed, and named Paul or Saul, a native of Tarsus, who has for
+some time past been exercising in Corinth his trade of weaver, and has
+gone into partnership with certain Jews expelled from Rome, for the
+weaving of tent-cloths and Cilician garments in goat-hair. They all
+spoke at once, and in very bad Greek. I made out, however, that this
+Sosthenes imputed as a crime to this Paul that he had entered the house
+wherein the Jews of Corinth are in the habit of meeting every Saturday,
+and had spoken with the object of seducing his co-religionists, and of
+persuading them to worship their god in a fashion contrary to their
+law. I had heard enough. So having, not without difficulty, silenced
+them, I informed them that had they come to me to complain of some
+matter of wrong or of some deed of violence wherefrom they might have
+suffered injury, I should have listened to them with patience, and
+with all the necessary attention; but, since their case turned simply
+upon<a class="pagenum" name="Page_97" id="Page_97" title="97"> </a> a question of words, and a disagreement in regard to their law,
+it concerned me not, and that I could not be judge of such matters. I
+thereupon dismissed them with these words: ‘Settle your quarrels among
+yourselves, as best you see fit.’”</p>
+
+<p>“What did they say to that?” asked Cassius. “Did they submit with good
+grace to so wise a decision?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not in the nature of brutes,” replied the proconsul, “to relish
+wisdom. Those fellows greeted my decision with harsh murmurings of
+which, as you may well imagine, I took no notice. I left them shouting
+and struggling at the foot of the tribunal. From what I could see,
+most of the blows fell to the plaintiff. He will be left for dead, if
+my lictors do not interfere. These Jews from the harbour are great
+ignoramuses, and like most ignorant people, not enjoying the faculty of
+supporting with arguments the truth of what they believe, they know no
+other argument than kicks and fisticuffs.</p>
+
+<p>“The friends of that little deformed and blear-eyed Jew named Paul seem
+to be particularly clever at that kind of controversy. Ye gods! How
+they got the better of the chief of the synagogue, raining blows on
+him, and trampling him under their feet! But I do not doubt that had
+the friends of Sosthenes been the stronger of the two parties, they
+would have treated Paul as the friends of Paul treated Sosthenes.”</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_98" id="Page_98" title="98"> </a>
+Mela congratulated the proconsul.</p>
+
+<p>“You were right, brother mine, in sending those wretched litigants
+about their business.”</p>
+
+<p>“Could I do otherwise?” replied Gallio. “How could I have decided
+between that Sosthenes and that Paul who are the one as stupid and
+as rabid as the other?... If I treat them with contempt, do not, my
+friends, think that is because they are poor and humble, because
+Sosthenes reeks of salted fish, or for the reason that Paul’s fingers
+have become worn in weaving carpets and tent-cloth. No, Philemon and
+Baucis were poor, yet worthy of the highest honours. The gods did not
+disdain being entertained at their frugal board. Wisdom raises a slave
+above his master. Nay, a virtuous slave is superior to the gods. If
+he is their equal in wisdom, he surpasses them in the beauty of the
+accomplishment. Those Jews are to be despised simply because they are
+boorish, and that no image of the divinity is reflected in them.”</p>
+
+<p>A smile overspread the countenance of Marcus Lollius at these word.</p>
+
+<p>“Truly, the gods,” he said, “would hardly frequent the Syrians who
+infest the harbours, amid the sellers of fruit and the strumpets.”</p>
+
+<p>“The Barbarians themselves,” resumed the proconsul, “possess some
+knowledge of the gods. Not to mention the Egyptians, who, in the olden
+days,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_99" id="Page_99" title="99"> </a> were men filled with piety, there is not in wealthy Asia a
+nation which has not worshipped Diana, Vulcan, Juno, or the mother of
+the Æneædes. They give these divinities strange names, confused forms,
+and sometimes offer up to them human sacrifices, but they recognise
+their power. Alone are the Jews ignorant of the providence of the gods.
+I know not whether that Paul, whom the Syrians also call Saul, is as
+superstitious as the others, and as obstinate in his errors. I know
+not what obscure idea he conceives of the immortal gods, and to tell
+the truth, I am not concerned to know it. What is there to be learned
+of those who know nothing! It amounts, to put it plainly, to educating
+oneself in ignorance. I gathered from some of his confused expressions
+in my presence and in reply to his accuser, that he joins issue with
+the priests of his nation, that he repudiates the religion of the
+Jews, and that he worships Orpheus under an assumed name which has
+escaped me. What makes me suppose this, is that he speaks with respect
+of a god, or rather of a hero, who is supposed to have descended into
+Hades, and to have reascended into the heavens, after having wandered
+among the pallid shades of the dead. He may perhaps have set himself
+to worship some subterranean Mercury. I should, however, feel more
+inclined to believe that he worships Adonis, for I think I heard him
+say that,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_100" id="Page_100" title="100"> </a> following in the steps of the women of Byblos, he wept over
+the sufferings and the death of a god.</p>
+
+<p>“These youthful gods, who die and come to life again, abound on Asiatic
+soil. The Syrian courtesans have brought several of them to Rome, and
+these celestial youths please, more than is proper, our respectable
+women. Our matrons do not blush to celebrate their mysterious rites in
+private. My Julia, so prudent and so self-contained, has repeatedly
+asked me how much should be believed of them. ‘What kind of a god,’
+have I answered her with indignation, ‘what can be the god who takes
+delight in the stealthy homage of a married dame? A woman should know
+no other friends than those of her husband. And do not the gods stand
+first in order among our friends?’”</p>
+
+<p>“Does not this man of Tarsus,” inquired the philosopher Apollodorus,
+“pay reverence rather to Typhon, whom the Egyptians call Sethon? It
+is said that a god with an ass’s head is shown honour by a certain
+Jewish sect. This god can be no other than Typhon, and I should not be
+surprised if the weavers of Cenchreæ held a secret intercourse with the
+Immortal, who, according to our gentle Marcus, committed so disgusting
+an outrage on the old woman who sold cakes.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know not,” resumed Gallio. “They do indeed say that a number of
+Syrians meet to celebrate<a class="pagenum" name="Page_101" id="Page_101" title="101"> </a> in secret the worship of a god with a
+donkey’s head. It may be that Paul is one of them. But what matters
+the Adonis, the Mercury, the Orpheus, or the Typhon of that Jew? He
+will never reign over any but the female fortune-tellers, the usurers,
+and the sordid traders who spoil the sailors in seaports. At the very
+utmost will he be able to win over, in the suburbs of the big cities, a
+few handfuls of slaves.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oho! Oho!” exclaimed Marcus Lollius in an outburst of laughter, “can
+you see that hideous Paul founding a religion of slaves? By Castor,
+it would indeed be a miraculous novelty! Should perchance the god of
+the slaves (may Jove avert the omen!) climb up into Olympus and expel
+therefrom the gods of the empire, what would he do in turn? In what way
+would he exercise his power over the astonished world? I should enjoy
+seeing him at work. He would no doubt keep up the Saturnalia during the
+entire course of the year. He would open to gladiators the road to the
+highest honours, establish the prostitutes of the Suburra in the temple
+of Vesta, and perhaps make of some wretched straggling village in Syria
+the capital of the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Lollius might have followed up his jest for some time had Gallio not
+interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>“Marcus,” he said, “do not entertain the hope of witnessing these
+marvellous novelties. Although<a class="pagenum" name="Page_102" id="Page_102" title="102"> </a> men are capable of stupendous acts of
+folly, it is not a little Jew weaver who could seduce them with his bad
+Greek and his tales about a Syrian Orpheus. The slaves’ god could but
+foment uprisings and servile wars, which would be promptly put down in
+blood, and he would soon perish himself, together with his worshippers,
+in an amphitheatre, under the teeth of wild beasts, to the plaudits of
+the Roman people.</p>
+
+<p>“Enough of Paul and Sosthenes. Their mind would not be of any help to
+us in the quest we were engaged upon ere they so untowardly interrupted
+us. We were seeking to know the future the gods have in store for us,
+not for you, dear friends, or for me in particular (for we are prepared
+to endure all that is to be), but for the fatherland and for the human
+race which we love and towards which we feel kindly. It is not that Jew
+weaver, with his inflamed eyelids, who could tell us, whatever Marcus
+may think, the name of the god who is to dethrone Jupiter.”</p>
+
+<p>Gallio broke off his speech to dismiss the lictors, who stood
+motionless in line before him, shouldering their fasces.</p>
+
+<p>“We require neither the rods nor the axes,” he remarked with a smile.
+“Speech is our only weapon. May the day come when the universe shall
+know no others. If you are not tired, my<a class="pagenum" name="Page_103" id="Page_103" title="103"> </a> friends, let us walk towards
+the Pirene fountain. We shall find midway an old fig-tree under which,
+so it is related, the betrayed Medea meditated her cruel revenge. The
+Corinthians hold the tree in reverence, in memory of that jealous
+queen, and suspend votive tablets from its branches, for Medea never
+brought them but good. It has cleft the earth with its branches,
+which have thrown out roots, and it is still crowned with a luxuriant
+foliage. Seated in its shade, we can while away time with conversation
+till our bath-hour.”</p>
+
+<p>The children, weary of pursuing Stephanas, were playing at
+knuckle-bones by the roadside. The apostle was striding along rapidly,
+when he came across, near the place of execution, a band of Jews, who
+had come up from Cenchreæ to ascertain the judgment rendered by the
+proconsul in regard to the synagogue. They were friends of Sosthenes,
+and were greatly irritated against the Jew of Tarsus and his adherents
+because they sought to change the law. Noticing the man, who was
+wiping with his sleeve his eyes blinded with blood, they thought they
+recognised him, and one of them, pulling him by the beard, asked him if
+he were not Stephanas, the companion of Paul.</p>
+
+<p>Proudly he answered:</p>
+
+<p>“Behold him!”</p>
+
+<p>He was quickly thrown to the ground, and trampled<a class="pagenum" name="Page_104" id="Page_104" title="104"> </a> under foot. The Jews
+were picking up stones and shouting:</p>
+
+<p>“He is a blasphemer! Stone him!”</p>
+
+<p>A couple of the most zealous tore up the milestone sunk by the Romans,
+and were endeavouring to heave it at him. The stones fell with a dull
+thud on the skinny bones of the apostle, who yelled:</p>
+
+<p>“Oh the delight of these wounds! Oh the joy of these sufferings! Oh the
+refreshment of this torture! I behold Jesus.”</p>
+
+<p>A few steps farther off, under an arbutus, and to the murmurings of a
+spring, old Posocharis was pressing in his arms the smooth flanks of
+Joessa. Annoyed at the disturbance, he growled with a choking voice,
+with head buried in the hair of the young girl:</p>
+
+<p>“Begone, you low brutes, and do not trouble a philosopher’s pastime.”</p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes, a centurion who was passing along the now deserted
+road, raised Stephanas from the ground, made him swallow a mouthful of
+wine, and gave him linen wherewith to bandage his wounds.</p>
+
+<p>While this was going on, Gallio, sitting with his friends under Medea’s
+tree, was saying:</p>
+
+<p>“If you wish to know the successor of the master of gods and men,
+meditate the words of the poet:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_105" id="Page_105" title="105"> </a>
+“‘Jove’s spouse shall bring forth a son more powerful than his
+father.’</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>“This line designates, not the august Juno, but the most illustrious
+among the noble women with whom consorted the Olympian who so often
+changed his form and his loves. It seems to me assured that the
+government of the universe is to fall to the lot of Hercules. This
+opinion has long since taken root in my mind, by reasons derived not
+only from the poets, but from philosophers and men of science. I have,
+so to speak, greeted by anticipation the accession of the son of
+Alcmene, in the climax of my tragedy of <em>Hercules on Œta</em>, ending with
+the following words:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“‘Hail, great conqueror of monsters, and pacifier of the world;
+be propitious unto us! Cast thy gaze upon the earth, and if
+some monster of a new kind strike terror into mankind, destroy
+it with a thunderbolt. Better than thy father wilt thou know
+how to hurl thunder.’</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>“I augur favourably of the coming reign of Hercules. During his life
+upon earth, he displayed a spirit patient and inclined to elevated
+thoughts. When the time comes for thunder to arm his hand, he will not
+suffer a new Caius to govern the Empire<a class="pagenum" name="Page_106" id="Page_106" title="106"> </a> with impunity. Virtue, ancient
+simplicity, courage, innocence, and peace will reign with him. Thus do
+I prophesy.”</p>
+
+<p>And Gallio, having risen, took leave of his friends with these words:</p>
+
+<p>“Fare ye well, and love me.”</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_107" id="Page_107" title="107"> </a></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<h2><a name="iii" id="iii"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<div class="width80">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-a_drop.jpg" width="80" height="90" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">As</span> Nicole Langelier came to the end of his reading, the birds heralded
+by Giacomo Boni filled the deserted Forum with their friendly cries.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was spreading over the Roman ruins the ash-tinted veil of
+evening; the young laurel-bushes planted along the Via Sacra lifted up
+into the diaphanous atmosphere their branches black as antique bronzes,
+while the flanks of the Palatine were clothed in azure.</p>
+
+<p>“Langelier,” spoke M. Goubin, who was not easily deceived, “you did
+not invent that story. The suit brought by Sosthenes against St. Paul
+before Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, is to be found in the <em>Acts of the
+Apostles</em>.”</p>
+
+<p>Nichole Langelier readily admitted the fact.</p>
+
+<p>“The story is told,” he said, “in chapter xviii., and occupies verses
+12 to 17 inclusively, which I am able to read to you, for I copied them
+on to a sheet of my manuscript.”</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_108" id="Page_108" title="108"> </a>
+Whereupon he read:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“‘12. And when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made
+insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to
+the judgment seat,</p>
+
+<p>“‘13. Saying, This <em>fellow</em> persuadeth men to worship God
+contrary to the law.</p>
+
+<p>“‘14. And when Paul was now about to open <em>his</em> mouth, Gallio
+said unto the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked
+lewdness, O <em>ye</em> Jews, reason would that I should bear with you:</p>
+
+<p>“‘15. But if it be a question of words and names, and <em>of</em> your
+law, look ye <em>to it</em>; for I will be no judge of such <em>matters</em>.</p>
+
+<p>“‘16. And he drove them from the judgment seat.</p>
+
+<p>“‘17. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of
+the synagogue, and beat <em>him</em> before the judgment seat. And
+Gallio cared for none of those things.’</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>“I have not invented anything,” added Langelier. “Little is known of
+Annæus Mela, and of Gallio, his brother. It is, however, certain that
+they were numbered among the most intelligent men of their day. When
+Achaia, a senatorial province under Augustus, an imperial one under
+Tiberius, was<a class="pagenum" name="Page_109" id="Page_109" title="109"> </a> restored to the Senate by Claudius, Gallio was sent
+thither as proconsul. He was doubtless indebted for the post to the
+influence of his brother Seneca; it is possible, however, that he was
+selected for his knowledge of Greek literature, and as a man agreeable
+to the Athenian professors, whose intellects the Romans admired. He
+was highly educated. He had written a book on physiological subjects,
+and, it is believed, some few tragedies. His works are all lost, unless
+something from his pen is to be met with in the collection of tragic
+recitations attributed without sufficient reasons to his brother the
+philosopher. I have assumed that he was a Stoic, and that he held in
+many respects the same opinions as his illustrious brother. But, while
+placing in his mouth words of virtue and rectitude, I have guarded
+against attributing any settled doctrine to him. The Romans of those
+days blended the ideas of Epicurus with those of Zenon. I was not
+incurring any great risk of being mistaken, when investing Gallio with
+this eclecticism. I have represented him as a kindly man. He was that,
+assuredly. Seneca has said of him that no one loved him in a lukewarm
+fashion. His gentleness was universal. He aspired to honours.</p>
+
+<p>“Quite the contrary, his brother Annæus Mela held aloof from them. We
+have on that point the testimony of Seneca the philosopher, as well as
+that<a class="pagenum" name="Page_110" id="Page_110" title="110"> </a> of Tacitus. When Helvia, the mother of the three Senecas, lost
+her husband, the most famed of her sons indited a small philosophical
+treatise for her. In a certain part of this work, he exhorts her to
+consider, in order to reconcile her to life, that there remain unto
+her sons like Gallio and Mela, differing as to character, but equally
+worthy of her affection.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Cast thine eyes upon my brothers,’ he says, or words to that effect.
+‘Both shall, by the diversity of their virtues, charm thy weary
+moments. Gallio has attained honours through his talents. Mela has
+despised them in his wisdom. Derive enjoyment from the regard in which
+the one is held, from the calm of the other, and from the love of both.
+I know the inner sentiments of my brothers. Gallio seeks in dignities
+an ornament for thyself. Mela embraces a gentle and peaceful life in
+order to devote himself to thee.’</p>
+
+<p>“A child during the principality of Nero, Tacitus did not know the
+Senecas. He merely collected what was currently said about them in his
+day. He states that if Mela held aloof from honours, it was through
+a refinement of ambition, and, a simple Roman knight, to rival the
+influence of the consular officers. After having administered in person
+the vast estates he possessed in Boetica, Mela came to Rome, and had
+himself appointed administrator of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_111" id="Page_111" title="111"> </a> Nero’s estate. The conclusion was
+drawn therefrom that he was shrewd in matters of business, and he was
+even suspected of not being as disinterested as he wished to appear.
+That may be. The Senecas, while parading their contempt for riches,
+were possessed of great wealth, and it is very hard to believe the
+tutor of Nero when, amid the luxury of his furniture and his gardens,
+he represents himself as faithful to his beloved poverty. Still, the
+three sons of Helvia were not ordinary souls. Mela had of Atilla,
+his wife, a son, Lucan the poet. It would seem that Lucan’s talent
+reflected great lustre on his father’s name. Letters were then held in
+high honour, and eloquence and poetry ranked above all things.</p>
+
+<p>“Seneca, Mela, Lucan, and Gallio perished with the accomplices of
+Piso. Seneca the philosopher was already an aged man. Tacitus, who
+had not been a witness of his death, has portrayed the scene for us.
+We know how Nero’s tutor opened his veins while in his bath, and how
+his young wife Paulina protested that she would die with him, and by a
+<a name="similar" id="similar"></a><ins title="Original has similiar">similar</ins> death. By Nero’s order, Paulina’s wrists, which
+had been opened at the veins, were bandaged. She lived, preserving
+thereafter a deathly pallor. Tacitus records that young Lucan, whilst
+under torture, denounced his mother. Even if there were confirmation of
+this infamous deed, the blame for it<a class="pagenum" name="Page_112" id="Page_112" title="112"> </a> should be laid to the tortures
+he underwent. But there is certainly one reason for not believing
+it. If indeed pain extorted from Lucan the names of several of the
+conspirators, he did not pronounce that of Atilla, since Atilla was not
+molested at a time when every information was blindly credited.</p>
+
+<p>“After the death of Lucan, Mela, with too great a haste and diligence,
+seized on the inheritance of his son. A friend of the young poet, who
+doubtless coveted the inheritance, became the accuser of Mela. It was
+alleged that the father had been initiated into the secret of the
+conspiracy, and a forged letter of Lucan was brought forth. Nero, after
+having read it, ordered it to be shown to Mela. Following the example
+set by his brother and so many of Nero’s victims, Mela caused his veins
+to be opened, after having bequeathed a large sum of money to the
+freedmen of Cæsar, in order to secure the remainder of his fortunes to
+the unhappy Atilla. Gallio did not survive his two brothers; he took
+his own life.</p>
+
+<p>“Such was the tragic end of these charming and cultured men. I have
+made two of them, Gallio and Mela, speak in Corinth. Mela was a great
+traveller. His son Lucan, while yet a child, was on a visit to Athens,
+at the time Gallio was proconsul of Achaia. There is therefore some
+show of reason for saying that Mela was then with his brother in
+Corinth. I<a class="pagenum" name="Page_113" id="Page_113" title="113"> </a> have supposed that two young Romans of illustrious birth,
+and a philosopher of the Areopagus, accompanied the proconsul. In so
+doing, I have not taken too great a liberty, since the intendants, the
+procurators, the proprætors, and the proconsuls whom the Emperor and
+the Senate respectively sent to govern the provinces, always had about
+themselves the sons of great families, who came to instruct themselves
+in the management of public affairs under their guidance, and that of
+men of keen intellect like my Apollodorus, more frequently freedmen
+acting as their secretaries. Lastly, I conceived the idea that at
+the moment St. Paul was being brought before a Roman tribunal, the
+proconsul and his friends were conversing freely about the most varied
+subjects, art, philosophy, religion, and politics, and that there
+pierced the various topics absorbing their interest a deep anxiety as
+to the future. There is indeed some likelihood that on that very day,
+just as well as on any other, they may have sought to discover the
+future destiny of Rome and the world. Gallio and Mela stood among the
+most elevated and open intellects of the day. Minds of such a calibre
+are at all times inclined to delve into the present and the past for
+the conditions of the future. I have noticed in the most learned and
+well-informed men whom I have known, to name but Renan and Berthelot,
+a pronounced tendency to interject at haphazard into<a class="pagenum" name="Page_114" id="Page_114" title="114"> </a> a conversation
+outlines of rational utopias and scientific forecasts.”</p>
+
+<p>“Here then we have,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “one of the best educated
+men of his day, a man versed in philosophic speculation, trained in
+the conduct of public affairs, and who was of as open and broad a mind
+as could be that of a Roman such as Gallio, the brother of Seneca, the
+ornament and light of his century. He is concerned about the future,
+he seeks to grasp the movement which is most affecting the world, and
+he tries to fathom the destiny of the Empire and the gods. Just then,
+by a unique stroke of fortune, he comes across St. Paul; the future
+he is in quest of passes by him, and he sees it not. What an example
+of the blindness which strikes, in the very presence of an unexpected
+revelation, the most enlightened minds and the keenest intellects!”</p>
+
+<p>“I would have you observe, my dear friend,” replied Nicole Langelier,
+“that it was not a very easy matter for Gallio to converse with St.
+Paul. It is not easy to conceive how they could possibly have exchanged
+ideas. St. Paul had trouble in expressing himself, and it was with
+great difficulty that he made himself intelligible to the folk who
+lived and thought like himself. He had never spoken word of mouth to
+any cultured man.</p>
+
+<p>“He was nowise capable of indicating a train of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_115" id="Page_115" title="115"> </a> thought and of
+following those of an interlocutor. He was ignorant of Greek science.
+Gallio, accustomed to the conversation of educated people, had long
+since trained his reason to debate. He knew not the maxims of the
+rabbis. What then could these two men have said to each other?</p>
+
+<p>“Not that it was impossible for a Jew to converse with a Roman. The
+Herods enjoyed a mode of expression which was agreeable to Tiberius
+and Caligula. Flavius Josephus and Queen Berenice discoursed in terms
+pleasing to Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem. We know that bejewelled
+Jews were at all times to be found in company of the antisemites. They
+were <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">meschoumets</i> (accursed unbelievers&mdash;anathema to Paul). Paul was
+a <em>nĕbi</em> (prophet). This fiery and haughty Syrian, disdainful of the
+worldly goods sought for by all men, thirsting after poverty, ambitious
+of insults and humiliations, rejoicing in suffering, was merely able to
+proclaim his sombre and inflamed visions, his hatred of life and of the
+beautiful, his absurd outbursts of anger, and his insane charity. Apart
+from this, he had nothing to say. In truth, I can discover one subject
+only on which he might have agreed with the proconsul of Achaia. ’Tis
+Nero.</p>
+
+<p>“St. Paul, at that time, could hardly have heard any mention of the
+youthful son of Agrippina, but on learning that Nero was destined to
+Imperial<a class="pagenum" name="Page_116" id="Page_116" title="116"> </a> power, he would immediately become a Neronian. He became so
+later on. He was still one at the time Nero poisoned Britannicus. Not
+that he was capable of approving of a brother’s murder, but because he
+entertained a profound respect for all government. ‘Let every soul be
+subject unto the higher powers,’ he wrote to his churches. ‘For rulers
+are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not
+be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have
+praise of the same.’ Gallio might perchance have found these maxims
+somewhat simple and commonplace, but he could not have disapproved of
+them as a whole. But if there is a subject which he would not have felt
+tempted to approach while speaking with a Jewish weaver, it is indeed
+the ruling of people and the authority of the Emperor. Once more, what
+could those two men well have said to each other?</p>
+
+<p>“In our own day, when a European official in Africa, let us say the
+Governor-General of the Sudan for his Britannic Majesty, or our
+Governor of Algeria, comes across a fakeer or a marabout, their
+conversation is naturally confined within restricted limits. St. Paul
+was to a proconsul what a marabout is to our civil Governor of Algeria.
+A conversation between Gallio and St. Paul would have resembled only
+too much, I imagine, that held by<a class="pagenum" name="Page_117" id="Page_117" title="117"> </a> General Desaix with his famous
+dervish. After the battle of the Pyramids, General Desaix, at the head
+of twelve hundred cavalry, pursued into Upper Egypt the Mamelukes of
+Murad Bey. On arriving at Girgeh, he heard that an old dervish, who had
+acquired among the Arabs a wide reputation for learning and sanctity,
+was living near that city. Desaix was endowed with both philosophy and
+humanity. Desirous of making the acquaintance of a man esteemed of his
+fellows, he caused the dervish to be summoned to headquarters, received
+him with honour, and entered into conversation with him through an
+interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Venerable old man,’ he said, ‘the French have come to bring Egypt
+justice and liberty.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I knew they would come,’ replied the dervish.</p>
+
+<p>“‘How did you come to know it?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Through an eclipse of the sun.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘How can an eclipse of the sun have informed you as to the movement of
+our armies?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Eclipses are brought about by the angel Gabriel, who places himself
+before the sun in order to announce to the faithful the misfortunes
+which threaten them.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Venerable old man, you are ignorant of the true cause of eclipses; I
+shall impart the knowledge of it to you.’</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_118" id="Page_118" title="118"> </a>
+“Thereupon, taking a stump of pencil and a scrap of paper, he traced
+some figures:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Let A be the sun, B, the moon, C, the earth,’ and so forth...</p>
+
+<p>“And when he had come to the end of his demonstration,</p>
+
+<p>“‘Such,’ he said, ‘is the theory governing eclipses of the sun.’</p>
+
+<p>“And as the dervish was mumbling a few words,</p>
+
+<p>“‘What does he say?’ asked the General of the interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>“‘General, he says that it is the angel Gabriel who causes eclipses, by
+placing himself in front of the sun.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘The fellow is simply naught but a fanatic!’ exclaimed Desaix.</p>
+
+<p>“Whereupon he drove the dervish out with well-administered kicks.</p>
+
+<p>“I imagine that had a conversation been entered into between St. Paul
+and Gallio, it would have ended somewhat as did the dialogue between
+the dervish and General Desaix.”</p>
+
+<p>“It must, however, be pointed out,” said Joséphin Leclerc, joining
+issue, “that between the Apostle Paul and the dervish of General
+Desaix, there is at the very least this difference: the dervish did
+not impose his faith on Europe. And you will admit that his Britannic
+Majesty’s honourable Governor of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_119" id="Page_119" title="119"> </a> the Sudan has doubtless not come
+across the marabout who is to confer his name on the biggest church
+in London; you must likewise admit that our civil Governor of Algeria
+has never come face to face with the founder of a religion which the
+majority of the French nation will some day believe and profess. These
+functionaries have not seen the future arise before them under a human
+form. The proconsul of Achaia did.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was none the less impossible for Gallio,” replied Langelier, “to
+carry on with St. Paul a steady conversation on some important subject
+regarding morals or philosophy. I am well aware, and you yourselves
+are not ignorant of the fact, that towards the fifth century of the
+Christian Era, it was believed that Seneca had known St. Paul in
+Rome, and had expressed admiration of the Apostle’s doctrines. This
+fable owed its spread to the deplorable clouding of the human mind
+following so closely upon the age of Tacitus and of Trajan. In order
+to obtain credence for it, certain forgerers, who at that time swarmed
+in Christian ranks, fabricated a correspondence which is mentioned
+respectfully by St. Jerome and St. Augustine. If these letters are
+those which have come unto us ascribed to Paul and Seneca, it must
+be that those two Fathers did not read them, or that they greatly
+lacked discernment. It is the absurd work of a Christian utterly
+ignorant<a class="pagenum" name="Page_120" id="Page_120" title="120"> </a> of everything connected with Nero’s time, and one totally
+incapable of imitating Seneca’s style. Is it necessary to say that the
+great divines of the Middle Ages firmly believed in the truth of the
+intercourse between the two men and in the genuineness of the letters?
+But the classical scholars of the Renaissance had no difficulty in
+demonstrating the unlikelihood and the falsity of these inventions. It
+matters little that Joseph de Maistre should have garnered by the way
+this antiquated rubbish together with much of the same kind. No one any
+longer heeds it, and henceforth it is only in pretty novels written
+for society by skilful and mystical authors that the apostles of the
+primitive Church converse freely with the philosophers and people of
+fashion of Imperial Rome and expound to the delight of Petronius the
+novel beauties of Christianity. The words of Gallio and his friends,
+which you have just heard, are endowed with less charm and more truth.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not deny it,” replied Joséphin Leclerc, “and I believe that the
+personages of the <a name="dialogue" id="dialogue"></a><ins title="Original has diologue">dialogue</ins> are made to think and speak
+as they must actually have thought and spoken, and that the ideas
+entertained by them are those of their day. Therein, it seems to me,
+lies the merit of the work, and therefore do I reason about it just as
+if I were basing my arguments on a historical text.”</p>
+
+<p>“You may safely do so,” said Langelier. “I<a class="pagenum" name="Page_121" id="Page_121" title="121"> </a> have not embodied in it
+anything for which I have not the authority of a reference.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well then,” resumed Joséphin Leclerc, “so we have been
+listening to a Greek philosopher and several Roman literati engaged
+in speculation as to the future destinies of their fatherland, of
+humanity, and of the earth, and seeking to discover the name of Jove’s
+successor. The while they are absorbed in this perplexing quest, the
+apostle of the new god appears before them, and they treat him with
+contempt. I maintain that in so doing they plainly show a lack of
+penetration, and lose through their own fault a unique opportunity of
+becoming instructed concerning that which they felt so great a desire
+to know.”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems self-evident to you, my good friend,” replied Nicole
+Langelier, “that Gallio, had he known how to set about it, would have
+gathered from St. Paul the secret of the future. Such is perhaps the
+first idea that springs to the mind, and it is one that many have
+become imbued with. Renan, after having recorded, according to the
+<em>Acts</em>, this singular interview between Gallio and St. Paul, is not
+averse from discovering evidence of a narrow and thoughtless mind in
+the contempt experienced by the proconsul for this Jew of Tarsus who
+appeared before his tribunal. He seizes the opportunity thus offered to
+lament the poor philosophy of the Romans. ‘What<a class="pagenum" name="Page_122" id="Page_122" title="122"> </a> a lack of foresight,’
+he exclaims, ‘is sometimes exhibited by intellectual men! In later
+times, it was to be discovered that the squabble between those abject
+sectarians was the great event of the century.’ Renan seems to believe
+that the proconsul of Achaia had merely to listen to that weaver in
+order to be there and then informed of the spiritual revolution in
+course of preparation throughout the universe, and to penetrate the
+secret of future humanity. And this is also no doubt what every one
+thinks at first sight. Nevertheless, ere settling the point, let
+us look more closely into the matter; let us examine what both men
+expected, and let us find out which of the two was, when all is said
+and done, the better prophet.</p>
+
+<p>“In the first place, Gallio believed that the youthful Nero would be
+an emperor of philosophic mind, govern according to the maxims of the
+Portico, and be the delight of the human race. He was mistaken, and
+the reasons for his erroneous assumption are only too patent. His
+brother Seneca was the tutor of the son of Agrippina; his nephew, the
+boy Lucan, lived on terms of intimacy with the young prince. Both
+his family and his personal interests bound up the proconsul with
+the fortunes of Nero. He believed that Nero would make an excellent
+Emperor, for the wish was father to the thought. His mistake arose
+rather from<a class="pagenum" name="Page_123" id="Page_123" title="123"> </a> weakness of character than from lack of intellect. Nero,
+moreover, was then a youth full of gentleness, and the early years
+of his principality were not to give the lie to the hopes of the
+philosophers. Secondly, Gallio believed that peace would reign over
+the world after the chastisement of the Parthians. He erred owing to a
+lack of knowledge of the actual dimensions of the earth. He erroneously
+believed that the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">orbis Romanus</i> covered the whole of the globe; that
+the inhabitable world ended at the burning or frozen strands, rivers,
+mountains, sands, and deserts reached by the Roman eagles, and that the
+Germani and Parthians peopled the confines of the universe. We know
+how much weeping and blood this error, shared in common by all Romans,
+cost the Empire. Thirdly, Gallio, pinning his faith to the oracles,
+believed in the eternity of Rome. He was mistaken, if his prediction
+is to be taken in a narrow and literal sense. But he was not so, if
+one considers that Rome, the Rome of Cæsar and Trajan, has bequeathed
+us its customs and laws, and that modern civilisation proceeds from
+Roman civilisation. It is in the august square where we now stand that
+from the height of the rostral tribune and in the Curia was debated
+the fate of the universe, and the form of constitution which to the
+present day governs the nations. Our science is based on Greek science
+transmitted to us by Rome.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_124" id="Page_124" title="124"> </a> The reawakening of ancient thought in the
+fifteenth century in Italy, in the sixteenth century in France and
+Germany, was the cause of Europe being born anew in science and in
+reason. The proconsul of Achaia did not deceive himself: Rome is not
+defunct, since she lives in us. Let us, in the fourth place, examine
+Gallio’s philosophical ideas. No doubt he was not equipped with a very
+sound natural philosophy, and he did not always interpret natural
+phenomena with sufficient precision. He applied himself to metaphysics
+as a Roman, <abbr title="that is">i.e.</abbr>, with a lack of acuteness. At heart, he valued
+philosophy merely because of its utility, and devoted himself mainly
+to moral questions. I have neither betrayed nor flattered him when
+placing his speeches on record. I have represented him as serious and
+mediocre, and a fairly good disciple of Cicero. You may have gathered
+that he reconciled, by dint of the poorest of reasoning, the doctrine
+of the Stoics to the national religion. One feels that whenever he
+indulges in speculation as to the nature of the gods, he is anxious to
+remain a good citizen and an honest official. But, after all, he thinks
+matters out, and reasons. The idea he conceives of the forces which
+govern the world is, in its principle, rational and scientific and, in
+this respect, it conforms to that which we have ourselves conceived of
+them. He does not reason as well as his friend the Greek<a class="pagenum" name="Page_125" id="Page_125" title="125"> </a> Apollodorus.
+He does not argue any worse than the professors of our University who
+teach an independent philosophy and a Christian antimaterialism. By
+his open-mindedness and his strength of intelligence, he seems our
+contemporary. His thoughts turn naturally in the direction followed by
+the human mind at the present moment. Do not therefore let us say that
+he was unable to recognise the intellectual future of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>“As to St. Paul, he announced the future; none doubt the fact. And yet
+he expected to see with his own eyes the world come to an end, and all
+things existing engulfed in flames. This conflagration of the universe,
+which Gallio and the Stoics foresaw in a future so remote that they
+none the less announced the eternity of the Empire, Paul believed to
+be quite close at hand, and was preparing for that great day. Herein
+he was mistaken, and you will admit that this misconception is in
+itself worse than all the united blunders of Gallio and his friends.
+Still more serious is it that Paul did not base this extraordinary
+belief on any observation or any reasoning whatever. He was ignorant
+of and despised science. He gave himself up to the lowest practices of
+thaumaturgy and glossology, and had no culture whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>“As a matter of fact, in regard to the future, as well as to the
+present and the past, there was nothing<a class="pagenum" name="Page_126" id="Page_126" title="126"> </a> the proconsul could learn
+from the apostle, nothing but a mere name. Had he learnt that Paul was
+of Christ’s religion, he would not have been any the better informed
+as to the future of Christianity, which was within a few years to
+disengage itself almost wholly from the ideas of Paul and of the first
+apostolic men. Thus it will be seen, if one does not pin one’s opinion
+to liturgical texts, and to the strictly verbal interpretations of
+theologians, that St. Paul foresaw the future less accurately than
+Gallio, and one will be inclined to think that were the apostle to
+return to Rome nowadays, he would discover more cause for surprise than
+the proconsul.</p>
+
+<p>“St. Paul, in modern Rome, would no more recognise himself on the
+column of Marcus Aurelius than he would recognise on the column of
+Trajan his old enemy Cephas. The dome of St. Peter’s, the Stanze of
+the Vatican, the splendour of the churches, and the Papal pomp, all
+would offend his blinking eyes. In vain would he look for disciples in
+London, Paris, or Geneva. He would not understand either Catholics or
+Reformers who vie in quoting his real or supposed Epistles. Nor would
+he understand the minds freed from all dogma, who base their opinion
+on the two forces he hated and despised the most: science and reason.
+On discovering that the Son of Man has not come, he would rend his
+garments, and cover himself with ashes.”</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_127" id="Page_127" title="127"> </a>
+Hippolyte Dufresne interrupted, saying:</p>
+
+<p>“Whether in Paris or in Rome, there is no doubt that St. Paul would be
+as an owl blinking in the sun. He would be no more fit than a Bedouin
+of the desert to communicate with cultured Europeans. He would not know
+himself when at a bishop’s, nor would he obtain recognition from him.
+Were he to alight at the house of a Swiss pastor fed upon his writings,
+he would astound him with the primitive crudity of his Christianity.
+All this is true. Bear in mind, however, that he was a Semite, a
+foreigner to Latin thought, to the genius of the Germani and Saxons, to
+the races from which sprung those theologians who, by dint of erroneous
+conceptions, mistranslations, and absurdities, discovered a meaning in
+his counterfeit Epistles. You conceive him in a world which was not his
+own, which can in no wise become his, and this absurd conception at
+once gives birth to an agglomeration of incongruous presentments. We
+picture to ourselves, to illustrate what I say, this vagabond weaver
+sitting in a Cardinal’s coach, and we make merry over the appearance
+presented by two human beings of so opposite a character. If you
+persist in resurrecting St. Paul, pray have the good taste to restore
+him to his race and country, among the Semites of the East, who have
+not greatly changed these twenty centuries, and for whom the Bible and
+the Talmud contain human<a class="pagenum" name="Page_128" id="Page_128" title="128"> </a> science in its entirety. Drop him among the
+Jews of Damascus or of Jerusalem. Lead him to the Synagogue. There
+he will listen without astonishment to the teachings of his master,
+Gamaliel. He will enter into disputation with the rabbis, will weave
+goat-hair, live on dates and a little rice, observe the law faithfully,
+and of a sudden undertake to destroy it. He will in turn be persecutor
+and persecuted, executioner and martyr, all with equal keenness. The
+Jews of the Synagogue will proceed with his excommunication, by blowing
+into a ram’s horn, and by spilling drop by drop the wax of black
+candles into a tub containing blood. He will endure without flinching
+this horrible ceremony, and will exercise, in the course of an arduous
+and continually menaced existence, the energy of a headstrong will. In
+such circumstances, he will probably be known to only a few ignorant
+and sordid Jews. But it will be Paul once more, and wholly Paul.”</p>
+
+<p>“That may be possible,” said Joséphin Leclerc. “Yet you will grant me
+that St. Paul was one of the principal founders of Christianity, and
+that he might have imparted to Gallio valuable information concerning
+the great religious movement of which the proconsul was entirely
+ignorant.”</p>
+
+<p>“He who founds a religion,” replied Langelier, “wots not what he
+does. I may say almost the same of those who found great human
+institutions,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_129" id="Page_129" title="129"> </a> monastic orders, insurance companies, national guards,
+banks, trusts, trade unions, academies, schools of music and the
+drama, gymnastic societies, soup-kitchens, and lectures. Generally
+speaking, these establishments do not for any length of time carry
+out the intentions of their founders, and it sometimes happens that
+they become diametrically opposed to them. It is as much as one can
+do to trace after many long years a few vestiges of their founders’
+original intention. In the matter of religions, at any rate among
+nations whose existence is troublous and whose mind is fickle, they
+undergo so incessant and so complete a transformation, according to
+the feelings or interests of their faithful and their ministers, that
+in the course of a few years they preserve naught of the spirit which
+created them. Gods undergo more changes than men, for the reason that
+their form is less precise and that they endure longer. Some there are
+who improve as they grow older; others deteriorate with the years. It
+takes less than a century for a god to become unrecognisable. The god
+of the Christians has perhaps undergone a more complete transformation
+than any other. This is doubtless attributable to the fact that he has
+belonged in succession to the most varied civilisations and races, to
+the Latins, to the Greeks, to the Barbarians, and to all the nations
+sprung from the ruins of the Roman Empire. It is assuredly a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_130" id="Page_130" title="130"> </a> far cry
+from the wooden Apollo of Dædalus to the classical Apollo Belvedere.
+Still greater a distance separates the youthful Christ of the Catacombs
+from the ascetic Christ of our cathedrals. This personage of the
+Christian mythology perplexes one by the number and variety of his
+metamorphoses. The flamboyant Christ of St. Paul is followed, as early
+as the second century, by the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels, a poor
+Jew, vaguely communistic, who becomes, with the Fourth Gospel, a sort
+of young Alexandrine, a milk-and-water disciple of the Gnostics. At
+a later period, if we only take into account the Roman Christs and
+tarry merely with the most famed of them, we have had the dominating
+Christ of Gregory VII., the bloodthirsty Christ of St. Dominic, the
+mob-leading Christ of Julius II., the atheistic and artistic Christ of
+Leo X., the indeterminate and insipid Christ of the Jesuits, Christ the
+protector of the factory, the defender of capital and the opponent of
+Socialism, who flourished under the pontificate of Leo XIII., and who
+still reigns. All those Christs, who have but the name in common, were
+not foreseen by Paul. In reality, he knew no more than Gallio about the
+future god.”</p>
+
+<p>“You exaggerate,” remarked M. Goubin, who disliked exaggeration in
+whatever form.</p>
+
+<p>Giacomo Boni, who venerates the sacred books of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_131" id="Page_131" title="131"> </a> all nations, here
+pointed out that Gallio and the Roman philosophers and historians were
+to be blamed for not having a knowledge of the Jews’ Sacred Scriptures.</p>
+
+<p>“Had they been better informed,” he said, “the Romans would not have
+harboured unjust prejudices against the religion of Israel; and, as
+your own Renan has said, a little goodwill and a better knowledge
+would perhaps have warded off fearful misunderstandings in regard
+to questions of interest to the whole of humanity. There lacked not
+educated Jews like Philo to explain the laws of Moses to the Romans,
+had the latter been more broad-minded and possessed a more correct
+presentiment of the future. The Romans experienced disgust and fear,
+when face to face with Asiatic thought. Even if they were right in
+fearing it, they were wrong in despising it. To despise a danger
+constitutes a great blunder. Gallio displayed want of foresight when
+stigmatising as criminal fancies and profanities of the vulgar the
+Syrian beliefs.”</p>
+
+<p>“How then could the Hellenist Jews have taught the Romans what they
+were themselves ignorant of?” inquired Langelier. “How could that
+honest Philo, so learned yet so shallow, have revealed to them the
+obscure, confused, and fecund thought of Israel, of which he knew
+nothing himself? What could he have imparted to Gallio concerning the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_132" id="Page_132" title="132"> </a>
+faith of the Jews except literary absurdities? He would have explained
+to him that the doctrine of Moses harmonises with the philosophy of
+Plato. Then, as always, cultured men had no idea of what was passing
+through the minds of the multitudes. The ignorant mob is for ever
+creating gods unknown to the literati.</p>
+
+<p>“One of the strangest and most notable facts of history is the conquest
+of the world by the god of a Syrian tribe, and the victory of Jehovah
+over all the gods of Rome, Greece, Asia, and Egypt. Upon the whole,
+Jesus was simply a <em>nĕbi</em>, and the last of the prophets of Israel.
+Nothing is known about him. We are in the dark as to his life and
+death, for the Evangelists are in nowise biographers. As to the moral
+ideas grouped under his name, they originate in truth with the crowd of
+visionaries who prophesied in the days of the Herods.</p>
+
+<p>“What is called the triumph of Christianity is more accurately the
+triumph of Judaism, and to Israel fell the singular privilege of giving
+a god to the world. It must be admitted that Jehovah deserved his
+sudden elevation in many respects. He was, when he attained to empire,
+the best of the gods. He had made a very bad beginning. Of him it may
+be said what historians say of Augustus, his heart softened with the
+years. At the time when the Israelites settled in the Promised Land,
+Jehovah was<a class="pagenum" name="Page_133" id="Page_133" title="133"> </a> stupid, ferocious, ignorant, cruel, coarse, foul-mouthed,
+indeed the most silly and most cruel of gods. But, under the influence
+of the prophets, there came about a complete transformation. He ceased
+being conservative and formal, and became converted to ideas of peace
+and to dreams of justice. His people were wretched. He began to feel a
+profound pity for all poor wretches. And although he remained at heart
+very much a Jew and very patriotic, he naturally became international
+when becoming revolutionary. He constituted himself the defender of
+the humble and oppressed. He conceived one of those simple ideas
+which captivate the world. He announced universal happiness, and the
+coming of a beneficent Messiah whose reign would be peace. His prophet
+Isaiah prompted him as to this admirable theme with words delightfully
+poetical and of unsurpassed softness:</p>
+
+<p>“‘The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of
+the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations
+shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye and let
+us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;
+and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for
+out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from
+Jerusalem. And he shall judge among nations, and shall rebuke many
+people: and they<a class="pagenum" name="Page_134" id="Page_134" title="134"> </a> shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
+spears into pruning-hooks.</p>
+
+<p>“‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie
+down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling
+together; and a little child shall lead them.’</p>
+
+<p>“In the Roman Empire, the god of the Jews set himself to capture the
+working classes and the social revolution. He addressed himself to the
+unfortunate. Now, in the days of Tiberius and Claudius, there existed
+within the Empire infinitely more unhappy than happy ones. There were
+hordes of slaves. One man alone owned as many as ten thousand. These
+slaves were for the most part sunk in wretchedness. Neither Jupiter,
+nor Juno, nor the Dioscuri troubled themselves about them. The Latin
+gods did not pity their condition. They were the gods of their masters.
+When came from Judæa a god who hearkened to the complaints of the
+humble, they worshipped him. So it is that the religion of Israel
+became the religion of the Roman world. This is what neither St. Paul
+nor Philo could explain to the proconsul of Achaia, for they themselves
+did not see it clearly. And this is what Gallio could not realise.
+He felt, however, that the reign of Jupiter was nearing its end, and
+he predicted the coming of a better god. From love of the national
+antiquities, he went for this god to the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_135" id="Page_135" title="135"> </a> Græco-Latin Olympus, and
+selected him of the blood of Jupiter, through aristocratic feeling.
+Thus it is that he chose Hercules instead of Jehovah.”</p>
+
+<p>“For once,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “you will admit that Gallio was
+mistaken.”</p>
+
+<p>“Less so than you think,” replied Langelier with a smile. “Jehovah
+or Hercules, it mattered little. You may be sure of this: the son of
+Alcmene would not have governed the world otherwise than the father of
+Jesus. Olympian as he might be, he would have had to become the god of
+the slaves, and assume the religious spirit of the new times. The gods
+conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have
+reasons for so doing. Pay attention to this. The spirit which favoured
+the accession in Rome of the god of Israel was not merely the spirit of
+the masses, but also that of the philosophers. At that time, they were
+nearly all Stoics, and believed in one god alone, one on whose behalf
+Plato had laboured and one unconnected by tie of family or friendship
+with the gods of human form of Greece and Rome. This god, through his
+infinity, resembled the god of the Jews. Seneca and Epictetus, who
+venerated him, would have been the first to have been surprised at
+the resemblance, had they been called upon to institute a comparison.
+Nevertheless, they had themselves greatly contributed towards rendering
+acceptable the austere monotheism<a class="pagenum" name="Page_136" id="Page_136" title="136"> </a> of the Judæo-Christians. Doubtless
+a wide gulf separated Stoic haughtiness from Christian humility, but
+Seneca’s morals, consequent upon his sadness and his contempt of
+nature, were paving the way for the Evangelical morals. The Stoics had
+joined issue with life and the beautiful; this rupture, attributed to
+Christianity, was initiated by the philosophers. A couple of centuries
+later, in the time of Constantine, both pagans and Christians will
+have, so to speak, the same morals and philosophy. The Emperor Julian,
+who restored to the Empire its old religion, which had been abolished
+by Constantine the Apostate, is justly regarded as an opponent of
+the Galilean. And, when perusing the petty treatises of Julian, one
+is struck with the number of ideas this enemy of the Christians held
+in common with them. He, like them, is a monotheist; with them, he
+believes in the merits of abstinence, fasting, and mortification of
+the flesh; with them, he despises carnal pleasures, and considers he
+will rise in favour with the gods by avoiding women; finally, he pushes
+Christian sentiment to the degree of rejoicing over his dirty beard and
+his black finger-nails. The Emperor Julian’s morals were almost those
+of St. Gregory Nazianzen. There is nothing in this but what is natural
+and usual. The transformations undergone by morals and ideas are never
+sudden. The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_137" id="Page_137" title="137"> </a>
+and are only seen from afar. Christianity did not secure a foothold
+until such time as the condition of morals accommodated itself to it,
+and as Christianity itself had become adjusted to the condition of
+morals. It was unable to substitute itself for paganism until such time
+as paganism came to resemble it, and itself came to resemble paganism.”</p>
+
+<p>“Granted,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that neither St. Paul nor Gallio saw
+into the future. No one does. Has not one of your friends said: ‘The
+future is concealed even from those who shape it’?”</p>
+
+<p>“Our knowledge of what the future has in store,” resumed Langelier,
+“is in proportion of our acquaintance with the present and the past.
+Science is prophetic. The more a science is accurate, the more can
+accurate prophesies be drawn from it. Mathematics, to which alone
+appertains entire accuracy, communicate a portion of their precision to
+the sciences proceeding from them. Thus it is that accurate predictions
+are made by means of mathematical astronomy and chemistry. One is
+able to calculate eclipses millions of years ahead, without fear of
+one’s calculations being found erroneous, as long as the sun, the
+moon, and the earth shall preserve the same relations as to bulk and
+distance. It is even permitted to us to foresee that these relations
+will be modified in a far distant future. Indeed, it is prophesied,
+on the strength of the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_138" id="Page_138" title="138"> </a> celestial mechanism, that the silver hornéd
+moon will not describe eternally the same circle round our globe, and
+that causes now in operation will, by dint of repetition, change its
+course. You may safely predict that the sun will become darkened, and
+will no longer appear except a shrunken globe over our icy seas, unless
+there should come to it in the interval some new alimentation, a thing
+quite within the possibilities, for the sun is capable of catching
+swarms of asteroids, just as a spider does flies. It is, however, safe
+to predict that it will become extinguished, and that the dislocated
+figures of the constellations will vanish star by star in the darkness
+of space. But what does the death of a star amount to? To the fading
+away of a spark. Let all the stars in the heavens die out just as
+the grasses of the field wither, what matters it to universal life,
+so long as the infinitely tiny elements composing them shall have
+retained within themselves the force which makes and unmakes worlds?
+It is safe to predict an even more complete end of the universe, the
+end of the atom, the dissociation of the last elements of matter, the
+times when protyle, when the amorphous fog will have reconquered its
+illimitable empire over the ruins of all things. And this will form but
+a breathing-spell in God’s respiration. All will begin anew.</p>
+
+<p>“The worlds will again be born to life. They<a class="pagenum" name="Page_139" id="Page_139" title="139"> </a> will live again to die.
+Life and death will succeed each other for all eternity. All sorts of
+combinations will become facts in the infinity of space and time, and
+we shall find ourselves seated once more on the flank of the Forum in
+ruins. But as we shall not know that we are ourselves, it will not be
+us.”</p>
+
+<p>M. Goubin wiped his eye-glass.</p>
+
+<p>“Such ideas are disheartening,” he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>“What then do you hope for, Monsieur Goubin,” asked Nicole Langelier,
+“to gratify your wishes? Do you aspire to preserve of yourself and of
+the world an eternal consciousness? Why do you wish to remember for all
+time that you are Monsieur Goubin? I will not conceal it from you: the
+present universe, which is far from nearing its end, does not seem to
+possess the property of satisfying you in this respect. Do not place
+any more store in those which are to follow, for they will doubtless
+be of the same kind. Do not, however, abandon all hope. It is possible
+that after an indefinite succession of universes, you shall be born
+anew, Monsieur Goubin, with a recollection of your previous existences.
+Renan has said that it was a risk to be taken, and that at all events
+it would not be long in coming. The successions of universe will take
+place for us within less than a second. Time does not count for the
+dead.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you cognisant,” asked Hippolyte Dufresne<a class="pagenum" name="Page_140" id="Page_140" title="140"> </a>, “of the
+astronomical dreams of Blanqui? The aged Blanqui, a prisoner in the
+Mont-Saint-Michel, could get but a glimpse of the sky through his
+stopped-up window, and had the stars for his only neighbours. This
+made of him an astronomer, and he based on the unity of matter and
+the laws ruling it a strange theory in regard to the identity of the
+worlds. I have read a sixty-page pamphlet of his wherein he sets
+forth that form and life are developed in exactly the same manner in
+a large number of worlds. According to him, a multitude of suns, all
+similar to our own, have, do, or will shed light upon planets in every
+respect similar to the planets of our own system. There is, was, and
+will be, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ad infinitum</i>, Venuses, Mars, Saturns, and Jupiters, quite
+the counterpart of our Saturn, Mars, and Venus, and worlds similar to
+our own. These worlds produce exactly what our world produces, and
+bear fruits, animals, and men resembling in all respects terrestrial
+plants, animals, and human beings. The evolution of life in them is the
+same as that on our globe. Consequently, thought the aged prisoner,
+there is, was and shall be throughout the infinite space myriads of
+Monts-Saint-Michel, each containing a Blanqui.”</p>
+
+<p>“We know but little of the worlds whose suns shine upon our nights,”
+resumed Langelier. “We perceive, however, that subjected to the same<a class="pagenum" name="Page_141" id="Page_141" title="141"> </a>
+mechanical and chemical laws, they differ from our own world and among
+themselves in extent and form, and that the substances burning in them
+are not distributed among all of them in the same proportions. These
+differences must produce an infinity of others which we do not suspect.
+A pebble is sufficient to change the fate of an Empire. Who knows?
+Perchance, Monsieur Goubin, many times multiplied and disseminated
+through myriads of worlds, has wiped, wipes, and shall eternally wipe
+clean his eye-glass.”</p>
+
+<p>Joséphin Leclerc did not suffer his friends to expatiate any further on
+astronomical dreams.</p>
+
+<p>“I am,” he said, “like Monsieur Goubin, of the opinion that all this
+would be heartrending were it not too far from us to affect us. What is
+of paramount interest for us, what we are curious to know is the fate
+of those who will come immediately after us in this world.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is no doubt,” said Langelier, “that the succession of worlds
+only fills us with sad astonishment. We should welcome with a more
+fraternal and friendly eye the future of civilisation, and the
+immediate destiny of our fellow men. The closer at hand the future,
+the more we are concerned about it. Unfortunately, moral and political
+sciences are inaccurate, and full of uncertainty. They have but an
+imperfect knowledge of the so far accomplished<a class="pagenum" name="Page_142" id="Page_142" title="142"> </a> developments of
+human evolution, and can therefore not instruct us concerning the
+developments which remain to be completed. Equipped with hardly any
+memory, they have little or no presentiment. This is why scientific
+minds feel an insurmountable repugnance to attempt investigations, the
+uselessness of which they know, and they dare not even confess to a
+curiosity which they entertain no hope of satisfying. Willingly would
+the task be undertaken to discover what would happen, were men to
+become wiser. Plato, Sir Thomas More, Campanella, Fénelon, Cabet, and
+Paul Adam<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> have reconstructed their particular city in Atlantis, in
+the Island of Utopia, in the Sun, at Salentinum, in Icaria, in Malaya,
+and established there an abstract social administration. Others, like
+the philosopher Sébastien Mercier, and the socialist-poet William
+Morris, dived into a far-off future. But they took their system of
+morals with them. They discovered a new Atlantis, and it is a city
+of dreamland which they have harmoniously built there. Shall I also
+quote Maurice Spronck?<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> He shows us the French Republic conquered by
+the Moors, in the 230th year of its foundation. He argues thus, in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_143" id="Page_143" title="143"> </a>
+order to induce us to hand over the government to the Conservatives
+whom alone he considers capable of warding off so great a disaster.
+Meanwhile Camille Mauclair,<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> trusting in humanity to come, reads in
+the future the victorious resistance, of Socialistic Europe against
+Mussulman Asia. Daniel Halévy dreads not the Moors, but, with greater
+show of reason, the Russians. He narrates, in his <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Histoire de quatre
+ans</i>, the foundation, in 2001, of the United States of Europe. But
+he seeks to show us more especially that the moral equilibrium of
+nations is unstable, and that a facility suddenly introduced into the
+conditions of life may suffice to let loose on a multitude of men the
+worst scourges and the most cruel sufferings.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="label">
+<a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_1">[A]</a>
+Paul Adam, journalist and playwright; contributor to the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Revue de Paris</i> and the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Nouvelle Revue</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="label">
+<a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_2">[B]</a>
+Maurice Spronck, journalist and barrister; contributor
+to the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Journal des Débats</i>, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Revue
+bleue</i>, and the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Revue hebdomadaire</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="label">
+<a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_3">[C]</a>
+Camille Faust, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">dit</i> Camille Mauclair, art critic and
+lecturer; author of works on Greuze, Fragonard, Schumann, Rodin, and of
+<em>De Watteau à Whistler</em>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Few are those who have sought to know the future, out of pure
+curiosity, and without moral intention or optimistic designs. I
+know no other than H. G. Wells who, journeying through future ages,
+has discovered for humanity a fate he did not, according to every
+indication, expect; for the institution of an anthropophagous
+proletariat and an edible aristocracy is a cruel solution of social
+questions. Yet such is the fate H. G. Wells assigns to posterity. All
+the other prophets of whom I have any<a class="pagenum" name="Page_144" id="Page_144" title="144"> </a> knowledge content themselves
+with entrusting to future centuries the realisation of their dreams.
+They do not unveil the future, being satisfied with conjuring it up.</p>
+
+<p>“The truth is that men do not look so far ahead without fright.
+Many consider that such an investigation is not only useless, but
+pernicious; while those most ready to believe that future events are
+discoverable are those who would most dread to discover them. This fear
+is doubtless based on profound reasons. All morals, all religions,
+embody a revelation of humanity’s destiny. The greater part of men,
+whether they admit it to, or conceal it from, themselves, would recoil
+from investigating these august revelations, to discover the emptiness
+of their anticipations. They are accustomed to endure the idea of
+manners totally different from their own, if once those manners are
+buried in the past. Thereupon they congratulate themselves on the
+progress made by morality. But, as their morality is in the main
+governed by their manners, or rather by what they allow one to see of
+them, they dare not confess to themselves that morality, which has
+continually changed with manners, up to their own day, will undergo
+a further change when they have passed out of this life, and that
+future men are liable to conceive an idea entirely at variance with
+their own as to what is permissible or not. It would go against the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_145" id="Page_145" title="145"> </a>
+grain with them to admit that their virtues are merely transitory,
+and their gods decrepit. And, although the past is there to point out
+to them ever-changing and shifting rights and duties, they would look
+upon themselves as dupes were they to foresee that future humanity is
+to create for itself new rights, duties and gods. Finally, they fear
+disgracing themselves in the eyes of their contemporaries, in assuming
+the horrible immorality which future morality stands for. Such are the
+obstacles to a quest of the future. Look at Gallio and his friends;
+they would not have dared to foresee the equality of classes in the
+matter of marriage, the abolition of slavery, the rout of the legions,
+the fall of the Empire, the end of Rome, nor even the death of those
+very gods in whom they had all but ceased to believe.”</p>
+
+<p>“’Tis possible,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “but it is time for us to dine.”</p>
+
+<p>And, leaving the Forum bathed in the calm light of the moon, they
+wended their way through the populous streets of the city towards a
+famed but cheap eating-house in the Via Condotti.</p>
+
+
+<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_146" id="Page_146" title="146"> </a></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_147" id="Page_147" title="147"> </a>
+<a name="iv" id="iv"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<div class="width80">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-t_drop.jpg" width="80" height="89" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">The</span> room was small, and hung with a smoke-stained paper dating from the
+pontificate of Pio Nono. Ancient lithographs were dependent from the
+walls, representing Cavour with his tortoise-shell-framed spectacles
+and collar-like beard, the leonine visage of Garibaldi, the stupendous
+moustaches of Victor Emanuel, a classic placing side by side of the
+combined symbols of the revolution and of the supreme power, a popular
+testimony to the Italian spirit which excels in juxtapositions, and
+in whose midst, in our own day, in Rome, the fulminating Pope and the
+excommunicated King daily exchange assurances of good-neighbourship,
+with an exquisite grasp of politics, and not without a certain flavour
+of delicate comedy. The mahogany sideboard was laden with plated
+chafing-dishes and alabaster goblets. The establishment affected for
+new things a contempt appropriate to long-standing renown.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_148" id="Page_148" title="148"> </a>
+Seated around a table bedecked with roses, and with flasks of Chianti
+before them, the five continued their philosophic discourse.</p>
+
+<p>“It is quite true,” said Nicole Langelier, “that the heart fails in
+the case of many men, when gazing into the abyss of future events. It
+is moreover certain that our all too imperfect knowledge of facts past
+and gone does not supply us with the elements required to enable us
+to determine accurately what is to succeed them. However, since the
+past of human social organisations is in part known to us, the future
+of those societies, a continuation and consequence of their past, is
+not wholly beyond our ken. It is not impossible to observe certain
+social phenomena, and to define from the conditions under which they
+have already occurred, the conditions under which they will reappear.
+We are not barred, when witnessing the commencement of an order of
+facts, from comparing it with a past order of analogous facts, and
+from deducing from the completion of the second a like completion of
+the first. By way of example: when observing that the forms of labour
+are changeable, that serfdom has succeeded slavery, salaried labour,
+serfdom, new methods of production may be anticipated; when it is shown
+that industrial capital has for barely a century taken the place of
+the small artisans and peasant property, one is led to ponder over the
+form which is to succeed capital;<a class="pagenum" name="Page_149" id="Page_149" title="149"> </a> when studying the manner in which
+was carried out the redemption of the feudal burdens and conditions
+of servitude, one is enabled to conceive how the redemption of the
+means of production nowadays constituting private ownership may some
+day be carried out. By studying the great Services of the State now in
+operation, it is possible to form a conception of future socialistic
+methods of production; and, after having thus investigated in several
+respects the present and the past of human industry, we shall, lacking
+certainties, determine by aid of probabilities whether collectivism
+is to be realised some day, not because it is just, for there is no
+reason for believing in the triumph of justice, but because it is
+the necessary sequel to the present state of things, and the fatal
+consequence of capitalistic evolution.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us, if you like, take another example: we possess some experience
+of the life and death of religions. The end of Roman polytheism in
+particular, is familiar to us. Its lamentable end enables us to imagine
+that of Christianity, whose decline we are witnessing.</p>
+
+<p>“We may similarly seek to find out whether future humanity will be
+bellicose or peaceful.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am curious to learn,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “how to set about it.”</p>
+
+<p>M. Goubin shook his head, saying:</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_150" id="Page_150" title="150"> </a>
+“Such a quest is useless. We know its result beforehand. War will last
+as long as the world.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is nothing to prove it,” replied Langelier, “and a consideration
+of the past leads one to believe, on the contrary, that war is not one
+of the essential conditions of social life.”</p>
+
+<p>And Langelier, while waiting for the <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">minestra</i> (soup) which was long
+in making its appearance, developed the foregoing idea, without,
+however, departing from the moderation characterising his mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Although the early periods of the human race,” he said, “are lost to
+us in impenetrable darkness, it is certain that men were not always
+warlike. They were not so during the long ages of the pastoral life;
+the memory of which survives only in a small number of words common
+to all Indo-European languages, and which reveal innocent manners.
+And there are reasons for believing that these peaceful pastoral
+centuries had a far longer duration than the agricultural, industrial,
+and commercial periods which, following them in a necessary progress,
+brought about between tribes and nations a state of all but constant
+war.</p>
+
+<p>“It was by force of arms that it was most frequently sought to acquire
+property, lands, women, slaves, and cattle. At first, wars were waged
+between village and village. Next, the vanquished, joining hands
+with the victors, formed a nation, and wars<a class="pagenum" name="Page_151" id="Page_151" title="151"> </a> occurred between nation
+and nation. Each of these peoples, in order to retain possession of
+the acquired riches, or to make further acquisitions, contended with
+neighbouring peoples for the possession of strongholds securing the
+command of roads, mountain passes, river courses, and the seashore. In
+the end, nations formed confederations, and contracted alliances. Thus
+it came about that men banded together; as they increased in strength,
+instead of contending for the goods of the earth, formally bartered
+them. The community of sentiments and interests gradually became
+broadened. A day came when Rome imagined she had established it the
+world over. Augustus thought he had inaugurated the era of universal
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>“We know how this illusion was gradually and savagely dissipated, and
+how the barbarian hordes overwhelmed the Roman peace. These barbarians,
+who had settled within the Empire, cut one another’s throats on its
+ruins, for a space of fourteen centuries, and founded in carnage
+countries baptized in blood. Of such was the life of nations in the
+Middle Ages, and the constitution of the great European monarchies.</p>
+
+<p>“In those days, a state of war was alone possible and conceivable.
+All the forces of the world were organised solely for the purpose of
+maintaining it.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_152" id="Page_152" title="152"> </a>
+“If the reawakening of thought, at the time of the Renaissance,
+permitted a few sparse minds to conceive better regulated relations
+between nations, at one and the same time, the burning desire to
+invent, and the thirst for knowledge supplied fresh food to the warrior
+instinct. The discovery of the West Indies, the exploration of Africa,
+the navigation of the Pacific Ocean, opened up vast territories
+to European avidity. The white kingdoms joined issue over the
+extermination of the red, yellow, and black races, and for the space of
+four centuries gave themselves up madly to the pillaging of three great
+divisions of the world. This is what is styled modern civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>“During this uninterrupted succession of deeds of rapine and violence,
+Europeans acquired a knowledge of the extent and configuration of
+the earth. As they progressed in this knowledge, so did their work
+of destruction proceed apace. To the present day, the whites come in
+contact with the black or the yellow races but to enslave or massacre
+them. The peoples whom we call barbarians know us so far through our
+crimes only.</p>
+
+<p>“For all that, those navigations, those explorations undertaken in
+a spirit of savage cupidity, these tracks by land and by sea opened
+up to conquerors, adventurers, hunters of and traders in men, these
+life-destroying colonisations, this brutal impulse<a class="pagenum" name="Page_153" id="Page_153" title="153"> </a> which has led and
+still leads one-half of humanity to destroy the other, are the fatal
+conditions of a further progress of civilisation, and the terrible
+means which shall have prepared, for a still undetermined future, the
+peace of the world.</p>
+
+<p>“This time, ’tis the whole world assimilated, in spite of enormous
+dissimilarities, to the state of the Roman Empire under Augustus.
+The Roman peace was the fruit of conquest. Universal peace will most
+assuredly not be brought about by the same means. No Empire is there
+to-day which can lay claim to the hegemony of the lands and seas
+covering the globe, known and surveyed at last. But, in spite of their
+being less apparent than those of political and military domination,
+the bonds which are beginning to unite the whole of humanity, and no
+longer merely a part of humanity, are none the less real; they are both
+more supple and more solid, more intimate and infinite in variety,
+since they are connected, athwart the fictions of public life, with the
+realities of social life.</p>
+
+<p>“The increasing multiplicity of communications and exchanges, the
+compulsory solidarity of the financial markets of every capital, of
+commercial markets vainly striving to guarantee their independence by
+recourse to unfortunate expedients, the rapid growth of international
+socialism, seem likely to guarantee, sooner or later, the union of the<a class="pagenum" name="Page_154" id="Page_154" title="154"> </a>
+peoples of every continent. If at the present moment the Imperialist
+spirit of the great States and the haughty ambitions of armed
+nations seem to give the lie to these previsions, and to damn these
+aspirations, it will be perceived that in reality modern nationalism
+amounts merely to a confused aspiration towards a more and more vast
+union of intellects and wills, and that the dream of a greater England,
+a greater Germany, a greater America, leads, will or do whatever you
+may, to the dream of a greater humanity, and to a partnership between
+nations for the common exploitation of the riches of the earth....”</p>
+
+<p>The speech was interrupted by the appearance of the tavern-keeper
+bearing a steaming soup-tureen and grated cheese.</p>
+
+<p>And, from amid the hot and aromatic vapour of the soup, Nicole
+Langelier concluded his argument with these words:</p>
+
+<p>“There will doubtless be further wars. The savage instincts coupled
+with the natural desires, pride and hunger, which have embroiled the
+world for so many centuries, will again disturb it. The human masses
+have so far not found their equilibrium. The sagacity of nations is not
+yet sufficiently methodical to secure the common welfare, by means of
+the freedom and the facility of exchanges, man has so far not come to
+be looked up to with respect<a class="pagenum" name="Page_155" id="Page_155" title="155"> </a> everywhere by man, the several portions
+of humanity are not yet about to associate harmoniously for the purpose
+of building the cells and organs of one and the same body. It will not
+be vouchsafed even unto the youngest of us to witness the close of the
+era of arms. But, we feel within us a presentiment of these better
+times which we are not to experience. If we extend into the future the
+present trend, we may even now determine the establishment of more
+perfect and frequent communications between all races and all nations,
+a more general and stronger feeling of human solidarity, the rational
+organisation of labour, and the coming of the United States of the
+World.</p>
+
+<p>“Universal peace will become a fact some day, not because men will
+become better (’tis more than we may hope for), but because a new order
+of things, a new science, and new economic necessities will force on
+men the state of peace, just as formerly the very conditions of their
+existence placed and kept them in a state of war.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nicole Langelier, a rose has shed a leaf in your glass,” said Giacomo
+Boni. “This has not taken place without the permission of the gods. Let
+us drink to the future peace of the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Raising his glass, Joséphin Leclerc remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“This wine of Chianti has a tart savour, and a light sparkle. Let us
+drink to peace, the while<a class="pagenum" name="Page_156" id="Page_156" title="156"> </a> Russians and Japanese are waging a bitter
+war in Manchuria and in Korea Bay.”</p>
+
+<p>“That war,” resumed Langelier, “marks one of the great periods in the
+history of the world. And, in order to grasp its meaning, we must hark
+back two thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>“The Romans, assuredly, did not suspect the vastness of the barbarian
+world, and had no conception of those immense human reservoirs which
+were to burst on them one fine day, and submerge them. They did not
+suspect that there existed in the world any other than the Roman peace.
+And yet, an older and vaster one there was, the Chinese peace.</p>
+
+<p>“Not but what their merchants had business relations with the
+merchants of Serica. The latter were wont to bring raw silk to a spot
+situated to the north of the Pamir table-land, named the Tower of
+Stone. The merchants of the Empire went thither. Bolder Latin traders
+penetrated as far as the Gulf of Tong-King and the Chinese coasts up
+to Hang-chau-fu, or Hanoi. Nevertheless, the Romans did not conceive
+that Serica constituted an Empire more densely populated than their own
+one, richer, and more advanced in agriculture and political economy.
+The Chinese, on their part, knew the white men. Their annals mention
+the fact that the Emperor An-tung, under which name we recognise
+Marcus<a class="pagenum" name="Page_157" id="Page_157" title="157"> </a> Aurelius Antoninus, despatched an embassy to them, which
+was perhaps merely an expedition of navigators and merchants. But
+they were ignorant of the fact that a civilisation more seething and
+violent than their own, as well as more prolific and infinitely more
+expansive, was spread over one of the faces of the globe of which they
+covered another face: the Chinese, agriculturists and gardeners full
+of experience, honest and expert merchants, led a happy life, owing to
+their system of exchange and to their immense associations of credit.
+Contented with their subtle science, their exquisite politeness, their
+singularly human piety, and their immutable wisdom, they were doubtless
+not anxious to become acquainted with the ways of life and thought
+of the white men who had come from the land of Cæsar. Perchance the
+ambassadors of An-tung may have seemed somewhat gross and barbarian to
+them.</p>
+
+<p>“The two great civilisations, the yellow and the white, continued
+ignorant of each other until the day when the Portuguese, having
+doubled the Cape of Good Hope, settled down to trade at Macao.
+Merchants and Christian missionaries established themselves in China,
+and indulged in every kind of violence and rapine. The Chinese
+tolerated them, in the manner of men accustomed to works of patience,
+and marvellously capable of endurance; nevertheless, they could on
+occasion take life with all<a class="pagenum" name="Page_158" id="Page_158" title="158"> </a> the refinements of cruelty. For nearly
+three whole centuries the Jesuits were, in the Middle Kingdom, a source
+of endless disturbances. In our own times, the Christian acquired the
+habit of sending jointly or separately into that vast Empire, whenever
+order was disturbed, soldiers who restored it by means of theft,
+rape, pillage, murder, and incendiarism, and of proceeding at short
+intervals with the pacific penetration of the country with rifles and
+guns. The poorly armed Chinese either defend themselves badly or not
+at all, and so they are massacred with delightful facility. They are
+polite and ceremonious, but are reproached with cherishing feeble
+sentiments of affection for Europeans. The grievances we have against
+them are greatly of the order of those which Mr. Du Chaillu cherished
+towards his gorilla. Mr. Du Chaillu, while in a forest, brought down
+with his rifle the mother of a gorilla. In its death, the brute was
+still pressing its young to its bosom. He tore it from this embrace,
+and dragged it with him in a cage across Africa, for the purpose of
+selling it in Europe. Now, the young animal gave him just cause for
+complaint. It was unsociable, and actually starved itself to death.
+‘I was powerless,’ says Mr. Du Chaillu, ‘to correct its evil nature.’
+We complain of the Chinese with as great a show of reason as Mr. Du
+Chaillu of his gorilla.</p>
+
+<p>“In 1901, order having been disturbed at Peking,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_159" id="Page_159" title="159"> </a> the troops of the
+five Great Powers, under the command of a German Field-Marshal,
+restored it by the customary means. Having in this fashion covered
+themselves with military glory, the five Powers signed one of the
+innumerable treaties by which they guarantee the integrity of the very
+China whose provinces they divide among themselves.</p>
+
+<p>“Russia’s share was Manchuria, and she closed Korea to Japanese trade.
+Japan, which in 1894 had beaten the Chinese on land and on sea, and
+had taken a part, in 1901, in the pacifying action of the Powers, saw
+with concentrated fury the advance of the voracious and slow-footed
+she-bear. And, while the huge brute indolently stretched out its muzzle
+towards the Japanese beehive, the yellow bees, arming their wings and
+stings together, riddled it with burning punctures.</p>
+
+<p>“‘It is a colonial war,’ was the expression used by a high-placed
+Russian official to my friend Georges Bourdon.<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> Now, the fundamental
+principal of every colonial war is that the European should be more
+powerful than the peoples whom he is fighting; this is as clear as
+noonday. It is understood that in these kinds of wars the European is
+to attack with artillery, while the Asiatic or African is of course
+to defend himself with arrows, clubs, assegais and tomahawks. It
+is tolerated that he should procure<a class="pagenum" name="Page_160" id="Page_160" title="160"> </a> a few antiquated flint-locks
+and cartridge-pouches; this aids in rendering colonisation more
+glorious. But in no case is it permissible that he should be armed
+and instructed in European fashion. His fleet must consist of junks,
+canoes and ‘dug-outs.’ Should he perchance purchase ships from European
+ship-owners, such ships shall naturally be unfit for use. The Chinese
+who fill their arsenals with porcelain shells conform to the rules of
+colonial warfare.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="label">
+<a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_4">[D]</a>
+M. Georges Bourdon, journalist, on the staff of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le
+Figaro</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“The Japanese have departed from these rules. They wage war in
+accordance with the principles taught in France by General Bonnal. They
+greatly outweighed their adversaries in knowledge and intelligence.
+While fighting better than Europeans, they show no respect for
+consecrated usages, and act to a certain degree in a fashion contrary
+to the law of nations.</p>
+
+<p>“’Tis in vain that serious individuals like Monsieur Edmond Théry<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a>
+demonstrated to them that they were bound to be beaten, in the superior
+interest of the European market and in conformity with the most firmly
+established economic laws. Vainly did the proconsul of Indo-China,
+Monsieur Doumer himself, call upon them to suffer, and at short notice,
+decisive defeats on sea and on<a class="pagenum" name="Page_161" id="Page_161" title="161"> </a> land. ‘What a financial sadness would
+bow down our hearts,’ exclaimed this great man, ‘were Bezobrazoff and
+Alexeieff not to extract another million out of the Korean forests.
+They are kings. Like them, I was a king: our cause is a common one. Oh
+ye Japanese! Imitate in their gentleness the copper-coloured folk over
+whom I reigned so gloriously under Méline.’ In vain did Dr. Charles
+Richet,<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> skeleton in hand, represent to them that being prognathous,
+and not having the muscles of their calves sufficiently developed, they
+were under the obligation of seeking flight in the trees when face to
+face with the Russians, who are brachycephalous and as such eminently
+civilising, as was demonstrated when they drowned five thousand Chinese
+in the Amur. ‘Bear in mind that you are links between monkey and man,’
+obligingly said to them my Lord Professor Richet, ‘as a consequence of
+which, if you should defeat the Russians or Finno-Letto-Ugro-Slavs, it
+would be exactly as if monkeys were to beat you. Is it not plain to
+you?’ They heeded him not.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="label">
+<a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_5">[E]</a>
+M. Edmond Théry, journalist, on the staff of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le
+Figaro</i>. Has been entrusted by the French Government with several
+politico-economic missions; author of several works in this connection.</p>
+
+<p class="label">
+<a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_6">[F]</a>
+Dr. Charles Richet, a noted physician, who has written
+plays, and is the author of several works on physiology and sociology.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“At the present moment, the Russians are paying the penalty, in the
+waters of Japan and in the gorges of Manchuria, not only of their
+grasping and brutal<a class="pagenum" name="Page_162" id="Page_162" title="162"> </a> policy in the East, but of the colonial policy of
+all Europe. They are now expiating, not merely their own crimes, but
+those of the whole of military and commercial Christianity. When saying
+this, I do not mean to say that there is a justice in the world. But
+we witness a strange whirligig of things, and brute force, up to now
+the sole judge of human actions, indulges occasionally in unexpected
+pranks. Its sudden starts aside destroy an equilibrium thought to be
+stable. And its pranks, which are ever the work of some hidden rule,
+bring about interesting results. The Japanese cross the Yalu and defeat
+the Russians in good form. Their sailors annihilate artistically a
+European fleet. Immediately do we discern that a danger threatens
+us. If it indeed exists, who created it? It was not the Japanese who
+sought out the Russians. It was not the yellow men who hunted up the
+whites. We there and then make the discovery of a Yellow Peril. For
+many long years have Asiatics been familiar with the White Peril. The
+looting of the Summer Palace, the massacres of Pekin, the drownings of
+Blagovestchenk, the dismemberment of China, were these not enough to
+alarm the Chinese? As to the Japanese, could they feel secure under
+the guns of Port Arthur? We created the White Peril. The White Peril
+has engendered the Yellow Peril. We have here concatenations giving to
+the ancient Necessity<a class="pagenum" name="Page_163" id="Page_163" title="163"> </a> which rules the world an appearance of divine
+Justice, and must perforce admire the astonishing behaviour of that
+blind queen of men and gods, when seeing Japan, formerly so cruel to
+the Chinese and Koreans, and the unpaid accessory to the crimes of
+Europeans in China, become the avenger of China, and the hope of the
+yellow race.</p>
+
+<p>“It does not, however, appear at first sight that the Yellow Peril at
+which European economists are terrified is to be compared to the White
+Peril suspended over Asia. The Chinese do not send to Paris, Berlin,
+and St. Petersburg missionaries to teach Christians the Fung-chui, and
+sow disorder in European affairs. A Chinese expeditionary force did
+not land in Quiberon Bay to demand of the Government of the Republic
+<em>extra-territoriality</em>, <abbr title="that is">i.e.</abbr>, the right of trying by a tribunal of
+mandarins cases pending between Chinese and Europeans. Admiral Togo
+did not come and bombard Brest roads with a dozen battleships, for the
+purpose of improving Japanese trade in France. The flower of French
+nationalism, the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">élite</i> of our Trublions, did not besiege in their
+mansions in the Avenues Hoche and Marceau the Legations of China and
+of Japan, and Marshal Oyama did not, for the same reason, lead the
+combined armies of the Far East to the Boulevard de la Madeleine to
+demand the punishment of the foreigner-hating Trublions. He did not
+burn<a class="pagenum" name="Page_164" id="Page_164" title="164"> </a> Versailles in the name of a higher civilisation. The armies of
+the Great Asiatic Powers did not carry away to Tokio and Peking the
+Louvre paintings and the silver service of the Elysée.</p>
+
+<p>“No indeed! Monsieur Edmond Théry himself admits that the yellow men
+are not sufficiently civilised to imitate the whites so faithfully. Nor
+does he foresee that they will ever rise to so high a moral culture.
+How could it be possible for them to possess our virtues? They are not
+Christians. But men entitled to speak consider that the Yellow Peril
+is none the less to be dreaded for all that it is economic. Japan, and
+China organised by Japan, threaten us, in all the markets of Europe,
+with a competition frightful, monstrous, enormous, and deformed, the
+mere idea of which causes the hair of the economists to stand on end.
+That is why Japanese and Chinese must be exterminated. There can be
+no doubt about the matter. But war must also be declared against the
+United States to prevent it from selling iron and steel at a lower
+price than our manufacturers less well equipped in machinery.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us for once admit the truth, and for a moment cease flattering
+ourselves. Old Europe and new Europe&mdash;for that is America’s true
+name&mdash;have inaugurated economic war. Each and every nation is waging
+an industrial struggle against the others. Everywhere does production
+arm itself furiously<a class="pagenum" name="Page_165" id="Page_165" title="165"> </a> against production. We are displaying bad grace
+when we complain that we are witnessing fresh competing and disturbing
+products invade the market of the world thus thrown into confusion. Of
+what use are our lamentations? That might is right is our god. If Tokio
+is the weaker, it shall be in the wrong and it shall be made to feel
+it; if it is the stronger, right will be on its side, and we shall have
+no reproach to cast at it. Where is the nation in the world entitled to
+speak in the name of justice?</p>
+
+<p>“We have taught the Japanese both the capitalistic <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i> and war.
+They are a cause of alarm because they are becoming like ourselves.
+In truth, it is awful. They dare to defend themselves with European
+weapons against Europeans. Their generals, their naval officers, who
+have studied in England, in Germany, and in France, reflect honour on
+their instructors. Several of them have followed the classes of our
+special military schools. The Russian Grand Dukes, who feared that no
+good could come out of military institutions too democratic to their
+taste, must feel reassured.</p>
+
+<p>“I am unable to foretell the issue of the war. The Russian Empire
+opposes to the methodical energy of the Japanese its irresolute forces
+which the savage imbecility of its government restrains, the dishonesty
+of a voracious administration robs, and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_166" id="Page_166" title="166"> </a> military incapacity leads to
+disaster. The stupendousness of its impotence and the depths of its
+disorganisation stand revealed. Withal, its golden reservoirs, kept
+filled by its rich creditors, are all but inexhaustible. On the other
+hand, its enemy has no other resources than onerous loans obtained with
+difficulty, of which victory itself may perchance deprive them. For
+while English and Americans are one in assisting it to weaken Russia,
+they do not intend that it shall become powerful and to be feared. It
+is hard to predict the final victory of one combatant over the other.
+But if Japan makes the yellow men respected by the white men, it will
+have greatly served the cause of humanity, and paved the way unawares
+and doubtless against its own wish for the pacific organisation of the
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean,” said M. Goubin, raising his eyes from his plate
+filled with a savoury <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">fritto</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“It is feared,” continued Nicole Langelier, “that Japan grown to
+manhood will educate China, teach it to defend itself and to exploit
+its wealth itself, and that Japan will create a strong China. No need
+to look upon such a contingency with alarm; it should, on the contrary,
+be hoped for in the universal interest. Strong nations co-operate to
+the harmony and wealth of the world. Weak nations, like China and
+Turkey, are a perpetual cause of disturbances and perils. But we are
+ever in too great a haste in our fears<a class="pagenum" name="Page_167" id="Page_167" title="167"> </a> and hopes. Should victorious
+Japan undertake to organise the old yellow Empire, it will not succeed
+in its task that quickly. It will require time to teach China that a
+China exists. For she knows it not, and as long as she is unaware of
+it, there will not be any China. A people exists only in the knowledge
+possessed by it of its existence. There are 350,000,000 Chinese, but
+they are not aware of the fact. As long as they have not counted
+themselves, they will not count for anything. They will not even exist
+by dint of numbers. ‘Number off!’ is the first word of command spoken
+by the drill-sergeant to his men. He is there and then teaching them
+the principle of societies. But it takes a long time for 350,000,000
+men to number themselves. Nevertheless, Ular, who is a European out
+of the common, since he believes that one should be humane and just
+towards the Chinese, informs us that a great national movement is
+simmering in all the provinces of the huge empire.”</p>
+
+<p>“And even should it happen,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “that victorious
+Japan came to infuse into Mongols, Chinese, and Tibetans a
+consciousness of themselves, and caused them to be respected by the
+white races, in what way would the peace of the world be better
+assured, and the conquering mania of nations be kept within stricter
+bounds? Would not negro humanity still remain to be exterminated?<a class="pagenum" name="Page_168" id="Page_168" title="168"> </a>
+Where is the black nation which will insure the respecting of negroes
+by the white and yellow races?”</p>
+
+<p>“But,” interposed Nicole Langelier, “who can define how far one of the
+great human races may go? The blacks are not, like the red man, dying
+out through contact with the Europeans. Where is the prophet who will
+venture to tell the 200,000,000 African blacks that their posterity
+will never enjoy wealth and peace on the lakes and great rivers? The
+white men passed through the ages of caves and lacustrine villages.
+They were at that time wild and naked. They dried rude potteries in the
+sun. Their chiefs led barbarian dances at which they shouted. They knew
+no other sciences than those of their sorcerers. Since those days they
+have built the Parthenon, conceived geometry, subjected the expression
+of their thought and the motions of their body to the laws of harmony.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you then going to say to the African negroes: ‘You shall for ever
+carry on an internecine war between tribe and tribe, and you shall
+inflict upon one another atrocities and absurd tortures; King Gléglé,
+permeated with a religious idea, shall for all time have prisoners tied
+up in a basket and thrown from the roof of his royal hut; you shall for
+ever devour with enjoyment the strips of flesh torn from the decomposed
+cadavers of your aged<a class="pagenum" name="Page_169" id="Page_169" title="169"> </a> relations; for ever shall explorers unload
+their rifles on you, and smoke you out in your kraals; the wonderful
+Christian soldier will enjoy in his bravery the amusement of hacking
+your women to pieces; the gay and festive sailor from the befogged seas
+shall for all time kick in the bellies of your little children, just to
+take the stiffness out of his knee-joints? Can you safely prophesy to
+one-third of humanity a state of perpetual ignominy?</p>
+
+<p>“I am unable to say whether one day, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe predicted in
+1840, a life will awaken in Africa full of a splendour and magnificence
+unknown to the cold-blooded races of the West, and whether art will
+blossom forth in new and dazzling forms. The blacks possess a keen
+appreciation of music. It may happen that a delightful negro art of
+dance and song shall see the light of day. In the meanwhile, the
+coloured folk of the Southern States are making rapid strides in
+capitalistic civilisation. Monsieur Jean Finot<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> has recently supplied
+us with information on the subject.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="label">
+<a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_7">[G]</a>
+M. Jean Finot, editor of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">La Revue</i>, and contributor to
+several French and European publications.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Fifty years ago they did not, as a whole, own two hundred and
+fifty acres of land. Nowadays their property is valued at over
+£160,000,000. They were illiterate. To-day fifty per cent. of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_170" id="Page_170" title="170"> </a> them
+can read and write. There are black novelists, poets, economists, and
+philanthropists.</p>
+
+<p>“The half-breeds, the issue of master and slave, are singularly
+intelligent and vigorous. The coloured men, both cunning and ferocious,
+instinctive and calculating, will gradually (so one of them has
+confided to me) reap the advantage of number, and one day lord it over
+the effeminate creole race which exercises so lightly over the blacks
+its fitful cruelty. It may be that the mulatto of genius, who will make
+the children of the whites pay dearly the blood of the negroes lynched
+by their fathers, is already born.”</p>
+
+<p>M. Goubin primed himself with his powerful eye-glass, and remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“Were the Japanese to be victorious, they would take Indo-China from
+us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thereby rendering us a great service,” answered Langelier. “Colonies
+are the curse of nations.”</p>
+
+<p>M. Goubin’s indignant silence was his sole reply.</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot listen to such statements,” exclaimed Joséphin Leclerc. “We
+require outlets for our products, and territories for our industrial
+and commercial expansion. What are you thinking of, Langelier? One
+policy alone governs Europe, America, and the world to-day&mdash;colonial
+policy.”</p>
+
+<p>Nicole Langelier, unruffled, replied:</p>
+
+<p>“Colonial policy is the most recent form of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_171" id="Page_171" title="171"> </a> barbarism, or, if you
+prefer, the term of civilisation. I make no distinction between these
+two expressions; they are identical. What men call civilisation is
+the present condition of manners, while what they style barbarism are
+anterior conditions. The manners of to-day will be styled barbarian
+when they shall be of the past. It is patent to me that our manners and
+morals embody the idea that strong nations shall destroy the weaker
+ones. Of such is the principle of the law of nations.</p>
+
+<p>“It remains to be seen, however, whether conquests abroad always
+constitute a good stroke of business for nations. It would not seem so.
+What have Mexico and Peru done for Spain? Brazil for Portugal? Batavia
+for Holland? There are various kinds of colonies. There are colonies
+which afford to unfortunate Europeans desert and uncultivated lands.
+These, loyal as long as they remain poor, separate from the mother
+country as soon as they become prosperous. Some there are which are
+inhabitable; these supply raw material, and import manufactured goods.
+Now it is plain that these colonies enrich, not those who govern them,
+but whoever trades with them. The greater part of the time they are
+not worth what they cost. Moreover, they may at any moment expose the
+mother country to military disasters.”</p>
+
+<p>“How about England?” interrupted M. Goubin.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_172" id="Page_172" title="172"> </a>
+“England is less a nation than a race. The Anglo-Saxons know no
+fatherland but the sea. England, looked upon as wealthy in her vast
+domains, owes her fortune and her power to her commerce. It is not her
+colonies which should be envied her, but her merchants, the authors of
+her wealth. Do you imagine, by way of illustration, that the Transvaal
+represents so very good a stroke of business for her? For all that, it
+is conceivable that in the present state of the world nations who bring
+forth many children and manufacture products in large quantities should
+seek territories and markets in far-off lands, and secure possession
+of them by stratagem and violence. How different it is in our own
+case! Our thrifty nation, careful not to have more children than the
+natal soil can feed without difficulty, and producing in a moderate
+degree, does not willingly embark on distant adventures; our France,
+who hardly goes beyond her garden wall, great heavens, what need has
+she of colonies? Of what use are they to her? What do they bring her?
+She has spent men and money in profusion, in order that the Congo,
+Cochin-China, Annam, Tonking, Guiana, and Madagascar shall purchase
+calicoes from Manchester, guns from Birmingham and Liége, brandies from
+Dantzig, and cases of wine all the way from Bordeaux to Hamburg. She
+has, for seventy years, despoiled,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_173" id="Page_173" title="173"> </a> hunted, and shot down Arabs, and in
+the end she has peopled Algeria with Italians and Spaniards!</p>
+
+<p>“The irony of these results is cruel enough, and it is hard to realise
+that this empire, ten or eleven times as big as France herself, has
+been formed to our detriment. But, it must be taken into consideration
+that whereas the French nation derives no advantage whatsoever from
+the possession of territories in Africa and Asia, the heads of its
+Government, on the other hand, find it to their great advantage to
+acquire them. They thereby secure the affection of the navy and army,
+which on the occasion of colonial expeditions reap a harvest of
+promotions, pensions, and crosses, to say nothing of the glory won in
+defeating the enemy. They conciliate the clergy by opening new paths
+to the Propaganda, and by allocating territories to Catholic missions.
+They make joyous the ship-owners, builders, and army contractors,
+whom they load with orders. They secure for themselves in the country
+itself a numerous following by the granting of concessions of immense
+forests and plantations without end. And, what is still more precious
+to them, they attach to their majority every parliamentary jobber
+and kerbstone-broker. Lastly, they cajole the multitude, proud in
+its possession of a yellow and black empire, which makes Germany and
+England turn green with envy. They are looked<a class="pagenum" name="Page_174" id="Page_174" title="174"> </a> upon as good citizens,
+patriots, and great statesmen. And if, like Ferry, they incur the
+risk of going under, as the result of some military disaster, they
+willingly run the risk fully convinced that the most harmful of distant
+expeditions will cost them fewer difficulties, and will inveigle them
+into fewer perils than the most useful of social reforms.</p>
+
+<p>“You can now realise why we have occasionally had imperialist
+ministers, jealous of aggrandising our colonial domain. We must
+congratulate ourselves, however, and praise the moderation of our
+rulers, who might have burdened us with still more colonies.</p>
+
+<p>“But all danger has not been averted, and we are threatened with an
+eighty years’ warfare in Morocco. Is there never to be an end to the
+colonial mania?</p>
+
+<p>“I am fully aware that nations are not sensible. How can it be
+expected of them, if one considers what they are made of? Still, a
+certain instinct oftentimes warns them of what is harmful. They are
+occasionally endowed with the power of observing. In the long run they
+undergo the painful experience of their errors and blunders. The day
+will come when it will dawn upon them that colonies are a source of
+perils and ruinous results. Commercial barbarism will be followed by
+commercial civilisation, and forcible, by pacific penetration.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_175" id="Page_175" title="175"> </a> These
+ideas have to-day found an echo even in the bosom of parliaments. They
+will prevail, not because men will be more disinterested, but because
+they will know their own interests better.</p>
+
+<p>“The great human asset is man himself. In order to rate the terrestrial
+globe, it is necessary to begin by rating men. To exploit the soil, the
+mines, the waters, all the substances and all the forces of our planet,
+it needs man, the whole of man; humanity, the whole of humanity. The
+complete exploitation of the terrestrial globe demands the united
+labour of white, yellow, and black men. By reducing, diminishing, and
+weakening, or, to sum it up in one word, by colonising a portion of
+humanity, we are working against ourselves. It is to our advantage
+that yellow and black men should be powerful, free, and wealthy. Our
+prosperity and our wealth depend on theirs. The more is produced, the
+more will there be consumed. The greater the profit they derive from
+us, the greater the profit we shall derive from them. If they reap the
+benefit of our labours, so shall we fully reap theirs.</p>
+
+<p>“If we study the movements which govern the destinies of societies, we
+may perhaps discover signs that the era of violent deeds is coming to
+an end. War, which was formerly a standing institution among nations,
+is now intermittent, and the periods of peace have become of longer
+duration than those<a class="pagenum" name="Page_176" id="Page_176" title="176"> </a> of war. Our country affords the observations of
+a fact full of interest, for the French nation presents an original
+characteristic in the military history of nations. Whereas other
+nations never waged war except from interest or necessity, alone the
+French have fought for the pleasure of fighting. Now it is remarkable
+that the taste of our compatriots has undergone a change. Thirty years
+ago Renan wrote: ‘Whoever knows France as a whole and in her provincial
+varieties will not hesitate to recognise the fact that the movement
+swaying this country for the past fifty years is essentially pacific.’
+It is a fact attested by a large number of observers that in 1870
+France had no desire to have recourse to the arbitrament of war, and
+that the declaration of war was greeted with consternation. It is an
+assured fact that few Frenchmen dream of taking the field, and that
+everybody readily accepts the idea that the army exists in order to
+avoid a war. Let me quote one example out of a thousand in confirmation
+of this state of mind. Monsieur Ribot, a representative of the people
+and a former Cabinet Minister, having been invited to some patriotic
+celebration, replied with an eloquent letter, begging to be excused.
+The same Monsieur Ribot knits his brows superciliously at the mere
+mention of the word disarmament. He has towards standards and cannon
+the leaning<a class="pagenum" name="Page_177" id="Page_177" title="177"> </a> proper to a former Minister of Foreign Affairs. In his
+letter he denounces as a national peril the pacific ideas disseminated
+by the Socialist. He sees in them a spirit of renunciation he cannot
+endure. Not that he is of a bellicose turn of mind. He, too, sighs
+for peace, but a peace full of pomp, magnificent, and flashing with
+the same pride as war. Between Monsieur Ribot and Jaurès, the matter
+is merely one of form. Both of them are for peace. Jaurès, simply;
+Monsieur Ribot, superbly. That is all. Better still and more surely
+than the Socialist democracy which contents itself with a bloused or
+coated peace does the sentiment of the bourgeois, who demand a peace
+gleaming with military insignia and bedecked with emblems of glory,
+testify to the inevitable decline of all idea of revenge and conquests,
+since one discerns in it the military instinct, at the very time when
+it is losing its nature and is becoming pacific.</p>
+
+<p>“France is acquiring by degrees the sentiment of her true strength,
+consisting in intellectual strength; she is becoming conscious of her
+mission, which is the sowing of ideas and the exercise of a sway over
+thought. She will within measurable time perceive that her only stable
+power has lain in her speakers, her writers, and her men of science.
+Hence she will some day fain have to recognise that the force of
+numbers, after having so often betrayed her, is<a class="pagenum" name="Page_178" id="Page_178" title="178"> </a> finally escaping from
+her, and that the time has come for her to resign herself to the glory
+which the exercise of the mind and the use of reason assure her of.”</p>
+
+<p>Jean Boilly, shaking his head, said:</p>
+
+<p>“You ask that France should teach other nations concord and peace. Are
+you so sure that she will be listened to and her example followed?
+Is her own tranquillity so assured? Has she not to fear threats from
+outside, to foresee dangers, to watch over her safety, and to provide
+for her defence? One swallow does not make a summer; one nation does
+not make the peace of the world. Is it so sure that Germany keeps up
+an army with the sole object of not waging war? Her Social-Democrats
+desire peace. But they are not the masters, and their deputies do
+not enjoy in the Parliament the authority which the number of their
+electors should give them. And Russia, who has hardly entered upon the
+industrial period, do you believe that she will soon be entering upon
+the pacific period? Is it not to be feared that after having disturbed
+Asia she will disturb Europe?</p>
+
+<p>“Supposing even that Europe should become pacific, can you not see
+that America would become warlike? Following upon Cuba, reduced to the
+state of a vassal republic, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the annexation of
+the Philippines, it is impossible<a class="pagenum" name="Page_179" id="Page_179" title="179"> </a> to say that the American Union is
+not a conquering nation. A publicist of Yankee proclivities, Stead,
+has said amid the plaudits of the whole of the United States: ‘The
+Americanisation of the world is on the march.’ And then there is Mr.
+Roosevelt, whose dream is to plant the Stars and Stripes in South
+Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. Mr. Roosevelt is Imperialist
+and he sighs for an America mistress of the world. Between ourselves,
+he is planning the Empire of Augustus. He has unfortunately perused
+Livy. The conquests of the Romans banish sleep from him. Have you read
+his speeches? They breathe a bellicose spirit. ‘Fight, my friends,’
+says Mr. Roosevelt, ‘and fight hard. There is nothing like blows. We
+are upon earth only to exterminate one another. Those who tell you the
+contrary are men without morality. Mistrust men who think. Thought
+enervates. ’Tis a French failing. The Romans conquered the world. They
+lost it. We are the modern Romans.’ Words full of eloquence, backed
+up with a navy which will soon be the second in the world, and with a
+military Budget of 40,500,000 francs!</p>
+
+<p>“The Yankees declare that in four years’ time they will fight Germany.
+If we are to believe this, they should first tell us where they
+expect to come into contact with the enemy. That a Russia, the serf
+of her Czar, that a still feudal Germany, should<a class="pagenum" name="Page_180" id="Page_180" title="180"> </a> entertain armies
+for fighting purposes, this one is tempted to lay to the door of
+ancient habits and the survival of a strenuous past. But that a young
+democracy, the United States of America, an aggregation of business
+men, a mass of emigrants from all countries, lacking community,
+traditions, and memories, madly cast into the scramble for the
+mighty dollar, should of a sudden be swept with the desire of firing
+torpedoes at the flanks of battleships, and of exploding mines under
+the enemy’s columns, affords a proof that the inordinate struggle for
+the production and exploitation of riches keeps alive the employment
+of and taste for brutal force, that industrial violence engenders
+military violence, and that mercantile rivalries kindle between nations
+hatreds that bloodshed can alone extinguish. The colonial mania of
+which you were speaking a while ago is but one of the thousand forms
+of the much-vaunted competition of our economists. The capitalistic
+state is just as much a warlike one as the feudal. The era has dawned
+of great wars for the industrial sovereignty. Under the present
+<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i> of national production it is the cannon which fixes tariffs,
+establishes customs, opens and closes markets. There exists no other
+regulator of commerce and industry. Extermination is the fatal result
+of the economic conditions in which the civilised world finds itself
+to-day....”</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_181" id="Page_181" title="181"> </a>
+The perfume of Gorgonzola and Stracchino was pervading the table. The
+waiter was bringing in wax-candles to each of which was attached the
+<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">abbrustolatoio</i><a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> wherewith to light the long cigars with straws, so
+dear to Italians.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="label">
+<a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a class="line" href="#FNanchor_8">[H]</a>
+<i xml:lang="it" lang="it">Abbrustolatoio</i>&mdash;apparatus attached to the candle; it has
+two rings through which the cigar is placed, and left to burn awhile.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Hippolyte Dufresne, who for some time past seemed to have remained
+indifferent to the conversation, here remarked in a low tone tinged
+with an ostentatious modesty:</p>
+
+<p>“Gentlemen, our friend Langelier was asserting just now that many men
+are afraid of disgracing themselves in the eyes of their contemporaries
+by assuming the horrible immorality which is to be the morality of the
+future. I do not entertain a like fear, and I have written a little
+tale, which has perhaps no other merit than the one of revealing my
+calmness of mind when considering the future. I shall one day crave
+permission to read it to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Read it right away,” said Boni, lighting his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>“You will be giving us pleasure,” added Joséphin Leclerc, Nicole
+Langelier, and M. Goubin.</p>
+
+<p>“I am not sure whether I have the manuscript with me,” replied
+Hippolyte Dufresne.</p>
+
+<p>With these words, he drew out of his pocket a roll of paper, and began
+to read what follows.</p>
+
+
+<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_182" id="Page_182" title="182"> </a></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_183" id="Page_183" title="183"> </a>
+<a name="v" id="v"></a>V<br />
+
+THROUGH THE HORN OR THE IVORY GATE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="width80">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-i_drop.jpg" width="80" height="87" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="uppercase">“It</span> was about one o’clock in the morning. Before retiring for the
+night, I opened the window and lit a cigarette. The hum of a motor-car
+scudding along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne broke the reigning
+silence. The trees were freshening the atmosphere by the swaying of
+their darkened tops. No buzzing insect, no living sound arose from
+the sterile soil of the city. The night was resplendent with stars.
+Their fires seemed, in the clearness of the air, more so than on other
+nights, of varied lines. The greater number blazed at white heat. Some
+there were, however, yellow and orange-tinted, similar to the flames
+of dying lamps. Several were blue, and I saw one of so pale a blue, so
+limpid, and so soft, that I could not avert my gaze from it. I regret
+being ignorant of its name, but I console myself with the thought that
+men do not give the stars their true names.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_184" id="Page_184" title="184"> </a>
+“When I reflect that each one of these drops of light enlightens
+worlds, I ask myself whether, like our own sun, they do not shed their
+rays on sufferings without end, and whether pain does not penetrate the
+utmost recesses of heaven. We can only judge the other worlds by our
+own. We know of life only the forms which it assumes upon the earth,
+and if we suppose that our planet is one of the least good, we have
+no reason for believing that all goes rightly in the others, nor that
+fortunate is he who is born under the rays of Altair, Betelgeux, or
+the fiery Sirius, when we know what a grievous affair it is to open
+our eyes on earth to the light of our old Sun. It is not that I find
+mine an unhappy fate, when compared with that of other men. I am not
+troubled with either wife or child. Love and sickness have left me
+unscathed. I am not very rich, and I do not go into society. I am thus
+to be numbered with the happy ones. Little joy, however, falls to their
+lot. What, then, can be the fate of the others? Men are really to be
+pitied. I impute no blame to nature for this; to hold a conversation
+with her is an impossibility; she is not intelligent. Nor will I lay
+the blame on society. There is no sense in opposing society to nature.
+It <a name="is" id="is"></a><ins title="Original has it">is</ins> as absurd to oppose the nature of men to the society of
+men, as to oppose the nature of ants to the society of ants, or the
+nature of herrings to the society of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_185" id="Page_185" title="185"> </a> herrings. Animal societies
+are the necessary outcome of animal nature. The earth is the planet
+where one eats; ’tis the planet of hunger. The animals peopling it
+are naturally gluttonous and ferocious. Man, the most intelligent of
+them all, is alone avaricious. Avarice has so far been the fundamental
+virtue of human societies, and the moral masterpiece of nature. Were
+I a writer, I should indite the praise of avarice. It is true that my
+book would not reveal anything strikingly new. The subject has been
+dealt with a hundred times over by moralists and economists. Human
+societies have avarice and cruelty as their august basis.</p>
+
+<p>“It is thus in the other universes, in the numberless ethereal worlds?
+Do all the stars I see shed their light on men? Do people eat and
+inter-devour one another beyond the infinite. This doubt troubles me,
+and I am unable to contemplate without fright the fiery dew suspended
+in the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>“My thoughts imperceptibly become more lucid and gentle, and the idea
+of life, in its sensuality, violent and suave in turn, once more
+assumes a pleasurable aspect to my mind. I sometimes say to myself that
+life is beautiful. For, without such beauty, how could we discern its
+ugly features, and how believe that nature is bad, if at the same time
+we do not believe that it is good?</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_186" id="Page_186" title="186"> </a>
+“For a few minutes past, the phrases of a sonata of Mozart have hovered
+in the air, with their white columns and their garlands of roses. My
+neighbour is a pianist, who at nights plays Mozart and Gluck. I close
+the window, and while undressing, I am pondering over the doubtful
+pleasures which I may give myself the next day, when of a sudden I
+remember that for a week past I have been invited to lunch in the Bois
+de Boulogne; I have a vague idea that the invitation is for the coming
+day. To make sure of it, I look up the letter of invitation, which lies
+open on my table. Its contents are:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p class="right nmb">“‘16th September 1903.</p>
+
+<p class="noi nmt nmb">“‘My dear old Dufresne,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="indent2em nmt">“‘Do me the pleasure of coming to luncheon with ... etc. etc.,
+next Saturday, the 23rd of September, 1903, etc. etc.’</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“It is for to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>“I ring for my valet.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Jean, wake me to-morrow at nine o’clock.’</p>
+
+<p>“It happens precisely that to-morrow, the 23rd of September 1903,
+I shall enter upon my fortieth year. From what I have already seen
+in this world I can almost conceive what still remains for me to be
+seen. I can safely foretell the topics of to-morrow’s conversation
+at the restaurant in the Bois: ‘My automobile goes sixty kilomètres
+an hour.’&mdash;‘Blanche<a class="pagenum" name="Page_187" id="Page_187" title="187"> </a> has a nasty disposition; but she is true to me;
+of that I feel sure.’&mdash;‘The Cabinet takes its pass-word from the
+Socialists.’&mdash;‘In the long run, the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">petits-chevaux</i> are a bore.
+However, there remains <i>baccara</i>.’&mdash;‘The workmen would be fools not to
+do as they please: the government always gives in to them.’&mdash;‘I will
+bet you that Epingle-d’Or will beat Ranavalo.’&mdash;‘What I personally
+cannot make out is why there is not some General to sweep away all
+those blackguards.’&mdash;‘What can you expect? France has been sold to
+England and Germany by the Jews.’ This is what I shall hear to-morrow.
+Here you have the social and political ideas of my friends, the
+great-grandsons of the bourgeois of July, princes of the factory and
+foundry, kings of the mine, who knew the way of mastering and enslaving
+the forces of the Revolution. My friends do not seem to me capable
+of preserving for any lengthy period the industrial empire and the
+political power bequeathed to them by their ancestors. My friends do
+not shine by their intelligence. They have not indulged in too much
+brainwork. No more have I. So far, I have not done much in this life.
+Like them, I am both idle and ignorant. I do not feel myself capable of
+achieving anything, and if I do not possess their vanity, if my brain
+is not stored with all the foolish ideas encumbering theirs; if, like
+them, I do not feel a hatred for and a fear of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_188" id="Page_188" title="188"> </a> ideas, it is due to a
+peculiar circumstance of my life. My father, a big manufacturer and
+Conservative deputy, gave me, when I was seventeen, a young and timid
+“coach,” who spoke little, and who looked like a girl. While preparing
+me for my bachelorship, he was organising the social revolution in
+Europe. His gentleness was something refreshing. He has often been
+put in prison, and is now a deputy. I used to copy his addresses to
+the international proletariat. He made me read the whole Socialistic
+library. He taught me things all of which were not to be credited, but
+he opened my eyes to what was going on about me; he demonstrated to me
+that everything our society honours is contemptible, and that all that
+it despises is worthy of esteem. He led me into the paths of rebellion.
+In spite of his demonstrations, I came to the conclusion that falsehood
+should be respected and hypocrisy venerated as the two surest supports
+of the public order. I remained a Conservative, but my soul became
+saturated with disgust.</p>
+
+<p>“As I am falling asleep, a few almost imperceptible phrases of Mozart
+still reach my ears now and then, and make me dream of temples of
+marble standing amid a blue foliage.</p>
+
+<p>“It was broad daylight when I awoke. I dressed myself much more quickly
+than it is my wont. Unconscious of the cause for this haste, I found
+myself<a class="pagenum" name="Page_189" id="Page_189" title="189"> </a> in the street without knowing how I had got there. What I now
+saw about me was to me the cause of a surprise which suspended all
+my faculties of reflection; and it is owing to this impossibility to
+reflect that my surprise did not increase, but remained stationary and
+calm. It would doubtless soon have become immoderate, and would have
+changed to stupor and terror, had I retained the use of my mind, so
+greatly was the scene which I was witnessing different from what it
+should be. Everything about me was to me new, unknown, and foreign.
+The trees and the lawns which I was in the habit of seeing daily had
+vanished. Where, on the day before, the tall grey buildings of the
+avenue stood out against the sky, there now stretched a fanciful line
+of brick cottages surrounded by gardens. I dared not look round to
+ascertain whether my own house still existed, and so I went straight
+towards the Porte Dauphine. I found it not. I took a street which was,
+so it seemed to me, the old road to Suresnes. The houses flanking it,
+of strange style and new form, too small to be occupied by rich people,
+were nevertheless embellished with pictures, sculptures, and brilliant
+potteries. A covered terrace surmounted them. I followed this rural
+road, whose curves produced enchanting perspectives. It was crossed
+obliquely by other sinuous ways. Neither trains, nor automobiles,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_190" id="Page_190" title="190"> </a> nor
+vehicles of any kind went by. Shadows flitted over the soil. I looked
+upwards and saw masses of huge birds and enormous fishes glide rapidly
+through the upper atmosphere, which seemed to be a combination of
+heaven and ocean. Near the Seine, the course of which was altered, I
+came across a crowd of men clad in short blouses knotted at the waist,
+and wearing long gaiters. To all appearance they were in their working
+clothes. But their gait was lighter and more elegant than that of our
+workmen. I noticed women among them. What had heretofore prevented my
+recognising them as such was that they were dressed like the men, that
+they had long and straight legs, and, so it seemed to me, the narrow
+hips of American women. Although these folk did not present a savage
+appearance, I looked at them with fright. They presented to my gaze a
+more foreign appearance than any of the numerous strangers I had so
+far met upon the earth. In order to avoid seeing another human face,
+I turned down a deserted lane. Very soon I came to a circus planted
+with masts from which flew crimson oriflammes bearing in letters of
+gold the words: <span class="smcap">European Federation</span>. Placards in large frames
+ornamented with emblems of peace hung at the foot of the masts. They
+embodied announcements regarding popular festivals, legal injunctions,
+and works of public interest. In addition to balloon time-tables was
+a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_191" id="Page_191" title="191"> </a> chart of the atmospheric currents drawn on the 28th of June of the
+year 220 of the Federation of Nations. All these texts were printed in
+characters new to me, and in a language of which I did not understand
+all the words. The while I was attempting to decipher them, the
+shadows of the countless machines cleaving the air flitted across my
+vision. Once more did I gaze upwards, and in this sky altered beyond
+recognition, more densely populated than the earth, cloven by rudders
+and threshed by screws, towards which a circle of smoke rose from the
+horizon, I perceived the sun. I felt like crying on seeing it. It was
+the only familiar figure which I had come across since morning. From
+its altitude I judged that it was about ten o’clock of the forenoon.
+Of a sudden I was surrounded by a second crowd of men and women,
+similar in appearance and in costume to the first. I was confirmed in
+the impression that the women, although some of them were very plump,
+others very skinny, and many beggared description, were on the whole
+<a name="androgynous" id="androgynous"></a><ins title="Original has androginous">androgynous</ins> in appearance. The crowd went its way.
+The open space once more was desert, just as our suburban quarters,
+which only come to life on the exodus from the workshops. I remained
+behind in front of the placards and read once more the date&mdash;the
+28th of June of the year 220 of the European Federation. What did it
+mean! A proclamation by the Federal Committee, on<a class="pagenum" name="Page_192" id="Page_192" title="192"> </a> the occasion of
+the festival of the Earth, furnished me with timely and useful data
+for comprehension of that date. This is what I read: ‘Comrades, you
+are aware how, in the last year of the twentieth century, the old
+order collapsed in a fearful cataclysm, and how, after fifty years of
+anarchy, the federation of the peoples of Europe was organised....”
+The year 220 of the federation of peoples was therefore the year 2270
+of the Christian Era; this was certainly a fact which remained to be
+explained. How came it that of a sudden I found myself transported to
+the year 2270?</p>
+
+<p>“I mused over the circumstance as I strolled at haphazard.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I have not, as far as I know,’ I said to myself, ‘been preserved
+for so many years in the mummy state, like Colonel Fougas. I have
+not driven the machine with which Mr. H. G. Wells explores time. And
+if, following the example of William Morris, I have, while asleep,
+skipped three and a half centuries, I am unaware of the fact, since,
+when dreaming, one does not know that one is doing so. I am utterly
+convinced that I am not asleep.’</p>
+
+<p>“While indulging in these musings and others not worth recording,
+I was following a long street bordered with railings behind which
+pink-hued houses of various styles, but all equally small, smilingly
+peeped through the foliage. At times I<a class="pagenum" name="Page_193" id="Page_193" title="193"> </a> perceived huge circuses of
+steel standing out in the landscape, and crowned with flames and
+smoke. Terror planed over these regions to which no name can be
+given, while the vibrating rush of air caused by the rapid flight of
+the machines resounded painfully through my brain. The street led to
+a meadow studded with clumps of trees and intersected by rivulets.
+Cows were pasturing in it. Just as my eyes were feasting upon the
+freshness of the scene I fancied I saw in front of me shadows flitting
+along a smooth and straight road. The whirlwind engendered by them,
+as they passed me, fanned my cheeks. I saw that they were trams and
+automobiles, real transparencies in their rapidity.</p>
+
+<p>“I crossed the road by a foot-bridge, and for a long time I sauntered
+through small meadows and woodlands. I thought I was in the open
+country, when I discovered an extensive frontage of resplendent
+houses bordering on the park. Soon, I found myself opposite a palace
+of an airy style of architecture. A sculptured and painted frieze,
+representing a largely attended feast, stretched across the vast
+façade. I perceived, through the panes of the bay-windows, men and
+women seated in a large and bright room around long marble tables,
+laden with prettily painted potteries. I entered, under the impression
+that this was a restaurant. I was not hungry, but weary, and the
+coolness of the room,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_194" id="Page_194" title="194"> </a> artistically hung with garlands of fruit,
+appeared to me delicious. A man who stood by the door asked me for my
+voucher, and, as I showed embarrassment, he remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“‘I see, comrade, that you are not of these parts. How is it that you
+are travelling without vouchers! Very sorry, but it is impossible for
+me to admit you. Go and seek the delegate who hires journeymen; or, if
+you are too weak to work, address yourself to the delegate who attends
+to those who need succour.’</p>
+
+<p>“I informed him that I was nowise unfit for work, and drew away. A
+stout fellow, who was picking his teeth, said to me obligingly:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Comrade, you need not go to the delegate who engages journeymen. I am
+the delegate attached to the bakery of the section. We are one comrade
+short. Come along with me. You shall be put to work at once.’</p>
+
+<p>“I thanked the corpulent comrade, assured him of my willingness,
+pointing out, however, that I was not a baker.</p>
+
+<p>“He looked at me with some surprise, and told me that he could see I
+enjoyed a joke.</p>
+
+<p>“I followed him. We stopped in front of an immense cast-iron building
+having a monumental gateway, on the pediment of which a couple of
+bronze giants were resting on their elbows&mdash;the Sower and the Reaper.
+Their bodies expressed<a class="pagenum" name="Page_195" id="Page_195" title="195"> </a> strength unstrained. A calm pride irradiated
+their faces, and they carried high their heads; in this, greatly
+dissimilar to the fierce-looking workers of the Flemish Constantin
+Meunier. We entered a room forty mètres in height, wherein, amid clouds
+of a light whitish dust, machinery was working with a sonorous and calm
+hum. Under the metallic dome, bags tendered themselves spontaneously
+to the knife which disembowelled them; the flour which escaped from
+them dropped into troughs where powerful hands of steel kneaded it
+into dough which flowed into moulds, which when full hastened to put
+themselves of their own accord into an oven as capacious and deep as
+a tunnel. Five or six men at most, motionless amid all this motion,
+supervised the labour of the machinery.</p>
+
+<p>“‘’Tis an old bakery,’ said my companion. ‘It hardly produces more than
+eighty thousand loaves a day, and its too weak machines employ too many
+hands. It matters little. Come up to the place where the goods arrive.’</p>
+
+<p>“I did not have the time to ask for a more explicit command. A lift
+had deposited me on the platform. Hardly had I reached it, when a kind
+of flying whale alighted close to me and unloaded a number of sacks.
+No human being was aboard this machine. Other flying whales brought
+more sacks which they unloaded, and which offered themselves<a class="pagenum" name="Page_196" id="Page_196" title="196"> </a> up in
+succession to the knife which ripped them open. The screws revolved,
+and the rudder did its work. There was no one at the helm, nobody
+aboard the machine. I could hear in the distance the slight hum of
+a wasp flying, and then the thing grew with astounding rapidity. It
+seemed quite sure of itself, but my ignorance as to what would happen,
+should it perchance go wrong, caused me to shudder. I was several times
+tempted to ask to be allowed to go down again. A false shame prevented
+me. I stood my ground. The sun was disappearing on the horizon, and it
+was about five o’clock when the lift came up for me. The day’s work was
+over. I was given a voucher for board and lodging.</p>
+
+<p>“The rotund comrade remarked to me:</p>
+
+<p>“‘You must be hungry. You may, if you wish, take your evening meal at
+the public table. If you prefer eating by yourself in your own room,
+you may likewise do so. If you prefer supping at my place, together
+with a few comrades, say so at once. I am going to telephone to the
+culinary workshop that your rations be sent to you. I am telling you
+all this in order to set you at ease, for you seem like a fish out of
+water. You have no doubt come from afar. You do not look as if you
+could take care of yourself. To-day, your task has been an easy one.
+Do not, however, imagine that one’s livelihood is earned every day as
+cheaply as that. If the <span class="hidehand">Ƶ</span><span class="hidehtml">Z</span>-rays which directed the balloons had worked<a class="pagenum" name="Page_197" id="Page_197" title="197"> </a>
+badly, as will sometimes happen, your task would not have been so easy.
+What is your particular line, and where do you come from?’</p>
+
+<p>“These questions embarrassed me greatly. I could not tell him the
+truth. I could not inform him that I was a bourgeois, and that I had
+come from the twentieth century. He would have thought me crazy. I
+replied in a vague and embarrassed manner that I had no trade, and that
+I came from far, from very far.</p>
+
+<p>“He smiled, and said:</p>
+
+<p>“‘I understand. You dare not admit it. You come from the United States
+of Africa. You are not the only European who has thus given us the
+slip. But nearly all these deserters end by coming back to us.’</p>
+
+<p>“I answered not a word, and my silence led him to believe that he had
+guessed aright. He renewed his invitation to supper, and asked me my
+name. I informed him that I was known as Hippolyte Dufresne. He seemed
+surprised at my having two names.</p>
+
+<p>“‘My name is Michel,’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>“Then, after a minute inspection of my straw hat, my jacket, my shoes,
+and the rest of my costume, which was no doubt somewhat dusty, but of a
+good cut, for after all I do not have my clothes made by a tailor who
+acts as hall-porter in the Rue des Acacias, he continued:</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_198" id="Page_198" title="198"> </a>
+“‘Hippolyte, I see whence you have come. You have lived in the black
+provinces. Nowadays there are only Zulus and Basutos to weave cloth so
+badly, to give so grotesque a shape to a suit, to make such ill-shapen
+footgear, and to stiffen linen with starch. It is only among them that
+you can have learnt to shave off your beard, while preserving on your
+face a moustache, and two little whiskers. This custom of scissoring
+the hair of the face, so as to form figures and ornaments, is the last
+word of tattooing, nowadays in vogue only among the Basutos and Zulus.
+These black provinces of the United States of Africa are wallowing in a
+state of barbarism resembling in many aspects the state of France three
+or four hundred years ago.’</p>
+
+<p>“I accepted Michel’s invitation.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I live quite close to here, in Sologne,’ he said. ‘My aeroplane scuds
+along fairly well. We shall soon be there.’</p>
+
+<p>“He made me take a seat under the belly of a huge mechanical bird, and
+we were soon cleaving the air so rapidly that I lost breath. The aspect
+of the countryside was vastly different from the one known to me. All
+the roads were bordered with houses; countless canals intersected the
+fields with their silvery lines. As I sat wrapt in admiration, Michel
+remarked to me:</p>
+
+<p>“‘The land is fairly well exploited, and cultivation<a class="pagenum" name="Page_199" id="Page_199" title="199"> </a> is “intense,” as
+they say, since chemists are themselves agriculturists. One has tried
+one’s best, and one has worked hard for the past three hundred years.
+The fact is that to make collectivism a reality it has been necessary
+to compel the soil to return four or five times more than it returned
+in the days of capitalistic anarchy. You, who have lived among the
+Zulus and Basutos, are aware that the necessaries of life are so scarce
+with them that were they to be divided among all it would amount to
+sharing poverty and not wealth. The super-abundant production which
+we have attained to is more especially due to the progress made by
+science. The almost total suppression of the urban classes has also
+been of great advantage to agriculture. The shopkeepers and the clerks
+have gone, some to the factory, others to the field.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘You have suppressed the cities! What has become
+of Paris?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Hardly any one lives there now,’ replied Michel. ‘The greater part
+of those hideous and insanitary five-storied houses, wherein dwelt
+the citizens of the closed era, have fallen in ruins, and have been
+suffered to remain in that condition. House-building was very poor in
+the twentieth century of that unhappy era. We have preserved some of
+the older and better constructed buildings and converted them into
+museums. We possess a<a class="pagenum" name="Page_200" id="Page_200" title="200"> </a> large number of museums and libraries: it is
+there we seek instruction. We have also kept a portion of the remains
+of the Hôtel de Ville. It was an ugly and fragile building, but great
+things were carried out within its precincts. As we no longer have
+tribunals, commerce, and armies, we no longer have cities, so to
+speak. Nevertheless, the density of the population is much greater on
+certain points than on others, and in spite of the rapidity of means of
+communication, the mining and metallurgic centres are densely peopled.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What is that you say?’ I asked him. ‘You have done away with the
+courts of law? Have you then suppressed crime and misdemeanour?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Crime will last as long as old and gloomy humanity. But, the number
+of criminals has diminished with the number of the wretched. The
+suburbs of the great cities were the feeding-grounds of crime; we no
+longer have big cities. The wireless telephone makes the highways safe
+day and night. We are all provided with electric means of defence.
+As to misdemeanours, they were rather the result of the scruples of
+the judges than of the perversity of the accused. Now that we no
+longer possess lawyers and judges, and that justice is administered by
+citizens summoned in rotation, many misdemeanours have disappeared,
+doubtless because it is impossible to recognise them as such.’</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_201" id="Page_201" title="201"> </a>
+“In this fashion did Michel discourse while steering his aeroplane. I
+am recording the meaning of his words as exactly as I can. I regret my
+inability, owing to a lack of memory, and also from fear of not making
+myself understood, to reproduce his language in all its expressiveness
+and its movement. The baker and his contemporaries spoke a language
+astonishing me at first by the novelty of its vocabulary and syntax,
+and especially by its pithy and flowing construction.</p>
+
+<p>“Michel came to ground on the terrace of a modest but pleasing dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>“‘We have arrived,’ he said; ‘’tis here that I live. You will sup with
+comrades who, like myself, take an interest in statistics.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What! You a statistician! I thought you were a baker.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I am a baker, six hours of the day. This is the duration of the day’s
+work as determined for nearly a century by the Federal Committee. The
+rest of the time I give up to statistical labours. It is the science
+which has stepped into history’s shoes. The historians of old related
+the brilliant deeds of the few. Ours register all that is produced and
+<a name="fullstop" id="fullstop"></a><ins title="Original has question mark">consumed.</ins>’</p>
+
+<p>“After having conducted me to a hydrotherapic closet established on
+the roof, Michel led me down-stairs to the dining-room lit up by
+electricity,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_202" id="Page_202" title="202"> </a> entirely white, and ornamented only with a sculptured
+frieze of strawberry plants in bloom. A table in painted pottery was
+covered with dishes with a metallic glaze. Three persons sat at it.
+Michel named them to me.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Morin, Perceval, Chéron.’</p>
+
+<p>“These three individuals were all clad alike in rough-spun jackets,
+velvet breeches, and grey stockings. Morin wore a long white beard;
+Chéron’s and Perceval’s faces were callow. Their short hair and more
+especially the frankness of their looks gave them the appearance of
+young lads. Yet I felt sure that they were women. Perceval seemed to me
+rather pretty, although she was no longer very young. I thought Chéron
+altogether charming. Michel introduced me:</p>
+
+<p>“‘I have brought comrade Hippolyte, who also calls himself Dufresne, to
+meet you; he has lived among the half-breeds, in the black provinces
+of the United States of Africa. He could not get any dinner at eleven
+o’clock, and so he must have an appetite.’</p>
+
+<p>“I was indeed hungry. They helped me to tiny bits of food cut into
+squares, which were not unpleasant to the taste, however new to me. A
+variety of cheeses were on the table. Morin poured me out a glass of
+light beer, and informed me that I could drink to my heart’s content,
+as it did not contain any alcohol.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_203" id="Page_203" title="203"> </a>
+“‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I am glad to see that you pay attention to
+the evils of alcohol.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘They have almost ceased to exist,’ answered Morin. ‘We succeeded in
+suppressing alcoholism before the end of the closed era. It would have
+otherwise been impossible to establish the new <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i>. An alcoholic
+proletariat is incapable of emancipation.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Have you not also,’ I inquired, while tasting a strangely carved bit
+of food&mdash;‘have you not also perfected food?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Comrade,’ replied Perceval, ‘you doubtless refer to chemical
+alimentation. So far, it has not made any great strides. ’Tis in
+vain that we send our chemists as delegates into the kitchen....
+Their tabloids are of no good. With the exception that we know how
+to compound properly caloric and nutritious foods, we feed almost as
+coarsely as the men of the closed era, and we enjoy it just as much.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Our scientists,’ remarked Michel, ‘are seeking to establish a
+rational system of food.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘That’s childishness,’ said the young female Chéron. ‘No good result
+will be reached, as long as the big intestine, a useless and harmful
+organ, and the seat of microbian infection, has not been removed....
+This will come in time.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘In what way?’ I asked.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_204" id="Page_204" title="204"> </a>
+“‘Simply by ablation. And this suppression, the result, in the first
+place, of an operation upon a sufficient number of individuals, will
+tend to establish itself by heredity, and will later on be common to
+the whole race.’</p>
+
+<p>“These people treated me humanely and conversed obligingly with me. But
+it was difficult for me to chime in with their manners and their ideas,
+while I noticed that I nowise interested them, and that they felt an
+absolute indifference towards my modes of thought. The more I showed
+them courtesies, the more I alienated their sympathies. Following
+upon my addressing a few compliments, albeit discreet and sincere, to
+Chéron, she no longer even deigned to look at me.</p>
+
+<p>“The meal over, addressing myself to Morin, who seemed to me
+intelligent and gentle, I said to him with a sincerity which indeed
+stirred me deeply:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Monsieur Morin, I am ignorant of all things, and I am suffering
+cruelly because of my lack of knowledge. I repeat to you that I come
+from far, from very far. Tell me, I entreat you, how the European
+Federation came into existence, and explain to me the present social
+system.’</p>
+
+<p>“Old Morin protested:</p>
+
+<p>“‘You are asking me for the history of three centuries. It would take
+me weeks, nay months.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_205" id="Page_205" title="205"> </a> Moreover, there are many things I could not
+teach you, as I do not know them myself.’</p>
+
+<p>“I thereupon entreated him to lay before me a very concise summary, as
+is done in the case of school children.</p>
+
+<p>“Morin, flinging himself back in his arm-chair, began:</p>
+
+<p>“‘To ascertain how the present society was constituted, it is necessary
+to go back far into the past.</p>
+
+<p>“‘The crowning achievement of the twentieth century was the extinction
+of war.</p>
+
+<p>“‘The arbitration Congress of The Hague, instituted in the middle of
+barbarism, did not to any degree contribute towards the maintenance of
+peace. But another more efficacious institution came into existence at
+that time. Groups of deputies were formed in the various Parliaments,
+who entered into communication with one another, and who in course of
+time came to deliberate in common on international questions. Giving
+expression as they did to the peaceful aspirations of a growing crowd
+of electors, their resolutions carried great weight, and supplied food
+for reflection to the governments, the most absolute of which, if one
+sets aside Russia, had at that time learnt to reckon with popular
+sentiment. What surprises us nowadays is that no one discerned in
+those meetings of deputies come<a class="pagenum" name="Page_206" id="Page_206" title="206"> </a> together from all countries the first
+attempt at an international parliament.</p>
+
+<p>“‘But then the party of violence was still powerful in the several
+empires, and even in the French Republic. And if the danger of the
+old-time dynastic and diplomatic wars determined upon at a green-baized
+table for the purpose of maintaining what was known as the European
+equilibrium was averted for all time, it was still to be dreaded,
+considering the unsatisfactory industrial condition affecting Europe,
+that the conflicting industrial interests might bring about some
+terrible conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>“‘The imperfectly organised proletariat, as yet without the
+consciousness of its strength, did not put an end to armed struggles
+between nations, but it limited their frequency and duration.</p>
+
+<p>“‘The last wars were the outcome of that mad fury of the old world
+known as the colonial policy. English, Russians, Germans, French, and
+Americans joined in rabid competition, in Asia and Africa, for the
+possession of zones of influence, as they said, wherein they could, on
+the basis of pillage and massacres, establish economic relations with
+the aborigines. They destroyed everything they could destroy in those
+two countries. Then followed the inevitable. The impoverished colonies
+which were expensive were retained and the prosperous ones lost. But
+mankind had to reckon, in Asia, with<a class="pagenum" name="Page_207" id="Page_207" title="207"> </a> a small heroic nation, taught
+by Europe, which made itself respected by her. By so doing, Japan, in
+barbarous times, rendered a great service to humanity.</p>
+
+<p>“‘When at last that detestable period of colonisation came to an end,
+no further was there any war. Still the States continued keeping up
+armies.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Having so far explained matters, I shall proceed to lay before you,
+pursuant to your request, the origins of present-day society. It
+issued from the one preceding it. In moral just as in individual life
+forms generate one another. Capitalistic naturally enough produced
+collectivist society. At the commencement of the twentieth century
+of the closed era, a memorable industrial evolution took place. The
+slender production of small artisans whose all were their tools was
+followed by a great production financially supported by a new agent of
+marvellous power&mdash;capital. Here was a great social progress.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What was a great social step in advance?’ I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“‘The capitalistic <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i>,’ replied Morin. ‘It brought humanity an
+untold source of wealth. By grouping the workers in considerable masses
+and multiplying their numbers it created the proletariat. By making the
+workers an immense State within the State it paved the way for their
+emancipation, and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_208" id="Page_208" title="208"> </a> furnished them with the means of conquering power.</p>
+
+<p>“‘This <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i>, however, which was to be productive of such happy
+results in the future, was execrated by the workers, in whose ranks it
+made countless victims.</p>
+
+<p>“‘There exists no social benefit which has not been purchased at the
+cost of blood and tears. Moreover, this <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i> which had enriched the
+whole world came within an ace of ruining it. After having increased
+production to a considerable extent, it failed in its endeavours to
+regulate it, and struggled hopelessly in the toils of inextricable
+difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>“‘You are not totally ignorant, comrade, of the economic disturbances
+which filled the twentieth century. During the last hundred years
+of the capitalistic domination, the disorder of production and the
+delirium of competition piled up disasters high. The capitalists and
+the masters vainly attempted, by means of gigantic combinations, to
+regulate production and to annihilate competition. Their ill-conceived
+undertakings were engulfed in an abyss of gigantic catastrophes.
+During those anarchical days, the fight between classes was blind
+and terrible. The proletariat, overwhelmed in the same ratio by its
+victories and its defeats, overwhelmed by the ruins of the edifice
+which it was pulling down on its own head, torn by fearful internal
+struggles, casting<a class="pagenum" name="Page_209" id="Page_209" title="209"> </a> aside in its blind violence its best leaders and
+most trustworthy friends, fought on without system and in the dark.
+It was, however, continually winning some advantage: an increase of
+wages, shorter hours of work, a growing freedom of organisation and
+of propaganda, the conquest of public power, and making progress in
+the dumfounded public mind. It was looked upon as wrecked through its
+divisions and mistakes. But all great parties are at odds, and all
+commit blunders. The proletariat had on its side the force of events.
+Towards the end of the century it attained the degree of well-being
+which opens the way to better things. Comrade, a party must have
+within itself a certain strength in order to accomplish a revolution
+favourable to its interests. Towards the end of the twentieth century
+of the closed era the general situation had become most favourable
+to the developments of socialism. The standing armies, more and more
+reduced during the course of the century, were abolished, following
+upon a desperate opposition of the powers that were, and of the
+bourgeoisie owning all things, by Chambers born of universal suffrage
+under the fiery pressure of the people of the cities and of the
+country. For a long time past already, the chiefs of State had retained
+their armies, less in view of a war which they no longer dreaded or
+could hope for, than to hold in check the multitude<a class="pagenum" name="Page_210" id="Page_210" title="210"> </a> of proletaries
+at home. In the end, they yielded. Militias imbued with socialistic
+ideas supplanted regular armies. It was not without good cause that
+the governments showed opposition. No longer defended by guns and
+rifles, the monarchical systems succumbed in succession, and Republican
+Government stepped into their places. Alone, England, who had
+previously established a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">régime</i> considered endurable by the workers,
+and Russia, who had remained Imperialist and theocratic, stood outside
+the pale of this great movement. It was feared that the Czar, who felt
+towards republican Europe the sentiments which the French Revolution
+had inspired the great Catherine with, might raise armies to combat
+it. But his government had reached a degree of weakness and imbecility
+which only an absolute monarchy can attain. The Russian proletariat,
+joining hands with the intellectuals, rose in revolt, and after an
+awful succession of outrages and massacres, power passed into the hands
+of the revolutionaries, who established the representative system.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Telegraphy and wireless telephony were then in use from one end of
+Europe to the other, and so easy of use that the poorest of individuals
+could speak, whenever he wished, and give utterance to whatever he
+saw fit to a fellow creature living in any corner of the globe.
+Collectivist ideas rained<a class="pagenum" name="Page_211" id="Page_211" title="211"> </a> down on Moscow. The Russian peasants could
+listen in their beds to the speeches of their comrades of Marseilles
+and Berlin. Simultaneously, the approximate steering of balloons and
+the exact course of flying-machines came into practical use. The result
+was the abolition of frontiers. This was the most critical moment of
+all. The patriotic instinct took a fresh life in the hearts of the
+nations so near uniting and fusing into one boundless humanity. In
+all countries, and at one and the same time, the nationalist faith,
+rekindled, emitted flashes of light. As there were no longer any kings,
+armies, or aristocracy, this great movement assumed a tumultuous and
+popular character. The French Republic, the German Republic, the
+Hungarian Republic, the Roman Republic, the Italian Republic, and even
+the Swiss and Belgian Republics, each expressed by a unanimous vote
+of their respective Parliaments, and at largely attended meetings,
+the solemn resolve to defend against all foreign aggression national
+territory and industry. Stringent laws were promulgated repressing
+the smuggling by flying-machines, and regulating severely the use
+of wireless telegraphy. The militia was everywhere reorganised and
+brought back to the old type of standing armies. Once more did the
+former uniforms, boots, dolmans, and generals’ plumes make their
+appearance. Fur busbies were anew welcomed with the applause of<a class="pagenum" name="Page_212" id="Page_212" title="212"> </a> Paris.
+All the shopkeepers and a portion of the workmen donned the tricolour
+cockade. In all foundry districts, cannon and armour-plates were once
+more forged. Terrible wars were anticipated. This mad spurt lasted
+three years, without matters coming to a clash, and then it slackened
+imperceptibly. The militias gradually recovered the bourgeois aspect
+and feeling. The union of nations, which had seemed postponed to a
+fabled remoteness, was near at hand. Pacific efforts were developing
+day by day; collectivists were gradually achieving the conquest of
+society. The day came at last when the defeated capitalists abandoned
+the field to them.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What a change!’ I exclaimed. ‘History cannot show another example of
+such a revolution.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘You may well imagine, comrade,’ resumed Morin, ‘that collectivism
+did not make its appearance till the appointed hour. The Socialists
+could not have suppressed capital and individual property had not those
+two forms of wealth been already all but destroyed <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">de facto</i> by the
+efforts of the proletariat, and still more so by the fresh developments
+of science and industry.</p>
+
+<p>“‘It had indeed been thought that Germany would be the first
+collectivist State; the Labour Party had there been organised for
+about one hundred years, and it was everywhere said: ‘Socialism is a
+thing German?’ Still, France, less well prepared, got the start of
+her.<a class="pagenum" name="Page_213" id="Page_213" title="213"> </a> The social revolution broke out in the first place at Lyons,
+Lille, and Marseilles, to the strains of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">l’Internationale</i>. Paris held
+aloof for a fortnight, and then hoisted the red flag. It was only on
+the following day that Berlin proclaimed the collectivist state. The
+triumph of socialism had as a result the union of nations.</p>
+
+<p>“‘The delegates of all the European Republics, sitting in Brussels,
+proclaimed the Constitution of the United States of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>“‘England refused to form part of it, but she declared herself its
+ally. While having become socialistic, she had retained her king,
+her lords, and even the wigs of her judges. Socialism was at that
+time supreme ruler in Oceania, China, Japan, and in a portion of
+the vast Russian Republic. Black Africa, which had entered upon the
+capitalistic phase, formed a confederation of little homogeneity. The
+American Union had a while ago renounced mercantile militarism. The
+condition of the world was consequently favourable, upon the whole,
+to the free development of the United States of Europe. Nevertheless,
+this union, welcomed with delirious joy, was followed for the space
+of half a century by economic disturbances and social miseries. There
+were no longer any armies, and hardly any militias; in consequence
+of not being constricted, popular movements did not take the form of
+violent outbreaks. But<a class="pagenum" name="Page_214" id="Page_214" title="214"> </a> the inexperience or the ill-will of the local
+governments was fostering a ruinous state of disorder.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Fifty years after the constitution of the States, the disappointments
+were so cruel, and the difficulties seemed to such a degree
+insurmountable, that the most optimistic spirits were beginning
+to despair. Smothered crackings foretold in all directions the
+dismemberment of the Union. It was then that the dictatorship of a
+committee composed of fourteen workmen put an end to anarchy, and
+organised the Federation of European nations as it exists to-day. There
+are those who say that the Fourteen displayed unparalleled genius and
+relentless energy; others claim that they were mediocrities terrified
+and influenced by the stress of necessity, and that they presided as
+if in spite of themselves over the spontaneous organisation of the
+new social forces. It is at all events certain that they did not go
+against the tide of events. The organisation which they established, or
+witnessed the establishment of, still subsists almost in its entirety.
+The production and consumption of goods are nowadays carried out, to
+all purposes, according to the rules laid down in those days. The new
+era justly dates from that time.’</p>
+
+<p>“Morin then expounded to me most succinctly the principles of modern
+society.</p>
+
+<p>“‘It rests,’ said he, ‘on the total suppression of individual
+property.’</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_215" id="Page_215" title="215"> </a>
+“‘Is not this intolerable to you?’ I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Why should we find it unendurable, Hippolyte? In Europe, formerly,
+the State collected the taxes. It disposed of resources proper to it.
+Nowadays it can be said with an equal degree of truth that it possesses
+everything, while possessing nothing. It is still more exact to say
+that it is we who own all things, since the State is not a thing apart
+from us, and is merely the expression of collectiveness.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘But,’ I asked, ‘do you not possess anything proper to yourself? Not
+even the plates out of which you eat, nor your bed, your bed-sheets,
+your clothes?’</p>
+
+<p>“Morin smiled at my question.</p>
+
+<p>“‘You are a deal more simple than I dreamt, Hippolyte. What! You
+imagine that we are not the owners of our personal property. What can
+well be your idea of our tastes, our instincts, our needs, and our mode
+of living? Do you take us for monks, as was said in the olden days, for
+men destitute of all individual character and incapable of affixing
+a personal impress on our surroundings? You are mistaken, my friend,
+altogether mistaken. We hold as our own the objects destined to our use
+and comfort, and we feel more attached to them than were the bourgeois
+of the closed era to their knick-knacks, for our taste is keener, and
+we possess a livelier sentiment of form. All our comrades of some
+refinement own works of art, and take great<a class="pagenum" name="Page_216" id="Page_216" title="216"> </a> pride in them. Chéron has
+in her home paintings which are her delight, and she would take it
+amiss were the Federal Committee to contest with her the possession of
+them. Personally, I preserve in that closet some ancient drawings, the
+almost complete work of Steinlen, one of the most highly prized artists
+of the closed era. Neither silver nor gold would tempt me to part with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Whence have you come, Hippolyte? You are told that our society is
+based on the total suppression of individual property, and you get into
+your head that such suppression covers goods and chattels, and articles
+in daily use. But, you simple-minded fellow, the individual property
+totally suppressed by us is the ownership of the means of production,
+soil, canals, roads, mines, material, plant, &amp;c. It does not affect
+lamps and arm-chairs. What we have done away with is the possibility of
+diverting to the benefit of an individual or of a group of individuals
+the fruits of labour; ’tis not the natural and harmless possession of
+the beloved chattels about us.’</p>
+
+<p>“Morin next enlightened me as to the distribution of intellectual and
+manual labours among all the members of the community, in conformity
+with their aptitudes.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Collectivist society,’ he went on to say, ‘differs not only from
+capitalistic society in the fact that in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_217" id="Page_217" title="217"> </a> the former everybody works.
+During the closed era, the people who toiled not were in great numbers;
+still, they constituted the minority. Our society differs more
+especially from the former in that labour was not properly classified,
+and that many useless tasks were performed. The workers produced
+without systematic order, method, and concerted action. The cities
+were full of officials, magistrates, merchants, and clerks, who worked
+without producing. There were also the soldiers. The fruits of labour
+were not properly distributed. The customs and tariffs established
+for the purpose of remedying the evil merely aggravated matters. All
+were suffering. Production and consumption are now minutely regulated.
+Lastly, our society differs from the old one in that we enjoy all the
+benefits derived from machinery, the use of which, in the capitalistic
+age, was so frequently disastrous for the workers.’</p>
+
+<p>“I asked him how it had been possible to constitute a society composed
+wholly of workmen.</p>
+
+<p>“Morin pointed out to me that man’s aptitude for work is general, and
+that it constitutes one of the essential characteristics of the race.</p>
+
+<p>“‘In barbarian times,’ he said, ‘and right until the end of the closed
+era, the aristocratic and wealthy classes always showed a preference
+for manual labour. They put their intellectual faculties<a class="pagenum" name="Page_218" id="Page_218" title="218"> </a> to an
+infinitesimal use, and in exceptional instances at that. Their tastes
+always inclined towards such occupations as the chase and war, wherein
+the body plays a greater part than the mind. They rode, drove, fenced,
+and practised pistol-shooting. It may therefore be said of them that
+they worked with their hands. Their work was either sterile or harmful,
+for the reason that a certain prejudice forbade them to engage in any
+useful or beneficent work, and also, because in their day, useful work
+was most often carried out under ignoble and disgusting conditions. It
+did not prove so very difficult to impart a taste for work to every one
+by reinstating it in a position of honour. The men of the barbaric ages
+took pride in carrying a gun or wearing a sword. The men of to-day are
+proud of handling a spade or a hammer. Humanity rests on a foundation
+which undergoes but little change.’</p>
+
+<p>“Morin having told me that the very memory of all monetary circulation
+had become lost, I asked him:</p>
+
+<p>“‘How then do you carry on business without cash payments?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘We exchange products by means of vouchers similar to those just given
+you, comrade, and they correspond to the hours of labour performed
+by us. The value of the products is computed by the length of time
+their production has taken. Bread, meat,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_219" id="Page_219" title="219"> </a> beer, clothes, an aeroplane,
+represent <em>x</em> hours, <em>x</em> days of labour. From each of these vouchers,
+collectivism, or, as it was styled formerly, the State, deducts a
+certain number of minutes for the purpose of allocating them to
+unproductive works, metallurgic and alimentary reserves, refuges and
+private asylums, and so forth.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘These minutes,’ interjected Michel, ‘are continually increasing
+apace. The Federal Committee orders far too many great works, the
+burden of which is thus on our shoulders. The reserve stocks are far
+too considerable. The public warehouses are crowded to overflowing with
+riches of all sorts. ’Tis our minutes of labour which are entombed
+there. Many abuses are still in existence.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘No doubt,’ replied Morin, ‘there is room for improvement. The wealth
+of Europe, which has accrued through general methodical labour, is
+untold.’</p>
+
+<p>“I was curious to learn whether these folk had no other measurement of
+labour than the time required for its accomplishment, and whether in
+their case the day’s work of the navvy or of the journeyman tempering
+plaster ranked with that of the chemist or the surgeon. I put the
+question frankly.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What a silly question,’ exclaimed Perceval.</p>
+
+<p>“Nevertheless old Morin vouchsafed to enlighten me.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_220" id="Page_220" title="220"> </a>
+“‘All works of study, of research, in fact all works contributing to
+render life better and more beautiful are encouraged in our workshops
+and laboratories. The collectivist State fosters the higher studies. To
+study is akin to producing, since nothing is produced without study.
+Study, just as much as work, entitles one to existence. Those who
+devote themselves to long and arduous research secure unto themselves
+a peaceful and respected existence. It takes a sculptor a fortnight
+to make the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">maquette</i> of a figure, but he has worked five years to
+learn modelling. Now the State has paid him for his <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">maquette</i> during
+those five years. A chemist discovers in a few hours the particular
+properties of a body. But he has spent months in isolating this body,
+and years in fitting himself to become capable of such an undertaking.
+During the whole of that time he has lived at the expense of the State.
+A surgeon removes a tumour in ten minutes. This is the result of
+fifteen years of study and practice. He has, as a consequence, received
+vouchers from the State for fifteen years past. Every man who gives in
+a month, in an hour, in a few minutes, the product of his whole life,
+is merely repaying in a lump sum what collectivism has given him day by
+day.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Without reckoning,’ said Perceval, ‘that our great intellectuals,
+our surgeons, our lady doctors,<a class="pagenum" name="Page_221" id="Page_221" title="221"> </a> our chemists, know full well how to
+derive profit from their works and discoveries, and to add beyond
+measure to their enjoyments. They cause to be allotted to themselves
+aerial machines of 60 h.p., palaces, gardens, and immense parks. They
+are, for the greater part, individuals keenly alive to laying hold of
+the world’s goods, and lead a more splendid and more copious existence
+than the bourgeois of the closed era. The worst of it is that the
+majority of them are stupid fools who should be recruited for work at
+the flour-mills, like Hippolyte.’</p>
+
+<p>“I bowed my thanks. Michel approved Perceval, and bitterly lamented the
+accommodating mind of the State in its system of fattening chemists at
+the expense of the other workers.</p>
+
+<p>“I asked whether the negotiation of the vouchers did not bring about a
+rise and fall.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Speculation in vouchers,’ replied Morin, ‘is prohibited. As a matter
+of fact, it cannot be prevented altogether. There are among us, just as
+formerly, avaricious and prodigal, laborious and idle, rich and poor,
+happy and miserable, contented and discontented men. Yet all manage to
+exist, and that is already something.’</p>
+
+<p>“I fell a-musing for a while; then I remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Monsieur Morin, if one is to believe you, it seems to me that you
+have realised equality and<a class="pagenum" name="Page_222" id="Page_222" title="222"> </a> fraternity, as much as possible. But, I
+fear that it is at the expense of liberty, which I have learnt to
+cherish as the best of things.’</p>
+
+<p>“Morin shrugged his shoulders, saying:</p>
+
+<p>“‘We have not established equality. We know what it means. We have
+secured a livelihood for all. We have placed labour on a pedestal of
+honour. After that, if the bricklayer thinks himself superior to the
+poet, and the poet to the bricklayer, ’tis their business. Every one
+of our workers imagines that his form of labour is the grandest in the
+world. The advantages of this idea are greater than the disadvantages.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Comrade Hippolyte, you seem to have delved deeply into the books
+of the nineteenth century of the closed era; their leaves are hardly
+turned nowadays: you speak their language, to us a foreign tongue.
+It is hard for us to realise nowadays that the bygone friends of the
+people should have adopted as their motto: <em>Liberty</em>, <em>Equality</em>,
+<em>Fraternity</em>. Liberty has no place in society, since it does not exist
+in nature. There is no free animal. It was said formerly that a man who
+obeyed the laws was free. This was childish. Moreover, so strange a
+use was made of the word liberty in the last days of the capitalistic
+anarchy that the word has ended in merely expressing the setting claim
+to privileges. The idea of equality is still less reasonable, and it
+is an<a class="pagenum" name="Page_223" id="Page_223" title="223"> </a> unfortunate idea in that it presupposes a false ideal. We have
+not to seek whether men are equal among themselves. What we must see to
+is that each one shall supply his best and receive all necessaries of
+life. As to fraternity, we know only too well how brothers have acted
+towards brothers during the course of centuries. We do not pretend to
+say that men are bad. We do not say that they are good. They are what
+they are, but they live in peace, when there are no longer any reasons
+for them to fight one another. We have but a single word to express our
+social system. We say that we live in harmony. Now it is an assured
+fact that all human forces act in concert nowadays.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘In the centuries,’ I said to him, ‘of what you style the closed
+era, one preferred the possession of things to their enjoyment. I can
+conceive that, reversing the order of things, you prefer enjoyment to
+possession. But is it not distressing to you not to have any property
+to leave to your children?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘In capitalistic times,’ replied Morin with animation, ‘how many
+were there who left inheritances? One in a thousand; nay, one in ten
+thousand. Nor must it be forgotten that many generations did not enjoy
+the faculty of bequeathing. Be this as it may, the transmission of
+fortune through the medium of inheritances was perfectly<a class="pagenum" name="Page_224" id="Page_224" title="224"> </a> conceivable
+when the family was in existence. But now....’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘you have no family ties?’</p>
+
+<p>“My surprise, which I had not been able to conceal, seemed comical to
+the woman-comrade Chéron.</p>
+
+<p>“‘We are quite aware,’ she said to me, ‘that marriage exists among
+the Kaffirs. We European women do not bind ourselves by promises; or,
+if we make them, the law does not take cognisance of them. We are of
+opinion that the whole destiny of a human being should not hang on a
+word. Nevertheless, there survives a relic of the customs of the closed
+era. When a woman gives herself, she swears fidelity on the horns of
+the moon. In reality, neither the man nor the woman takes any binding
+engagement. Yet it is not of rare occurrence that their union endures
+as long as life. Neither of them would wish to be the object of a
+fidelity secured by means of an oath, instead of by physical and moral
+expediency. We owe nothing to anybody. Formerly, a man convinced a
+woman that she belonged to him. We are less simple-minded. We believe
+that a human being belongs to itself alone. We give ourselves when we
+please, and to whom we see fit.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Moreover, we feel no shame in yielding to<a class="pagenum" name="Page_225" id="Page_225" title="225"> </a> desire. We are no
+hypocrites. Only four hundred years ago, physiology was a sealed book
+to men, and their ignorance was the cause of dire illusions and cruel
+deceptions. Hippolyte, whatever the Kaffirs may say, society must be
+subordinate to nature, and not, as too long has been the case, nature
+to society?’</p>
+
+<p>“Perceval, endorsing the speech of her comrade, added:</p>
+
+<p>“‘To show you how the sex question is regulated in our society, I must
+tell you, Hippolyte, that in many factories the recruiting delegate
+does not even inquire about one’s sex. The sex of an individual does
+not interest collectivism.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘But the children?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Well? The children?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Not having any family ideal, are they not neglected?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Whence did you get such an idea? Maternal love is a most powerful
+instinct in woman. In the hideous society of the past, mothers were to
+be seen courting misery and shame, in order to bring up illegitimate
+offspring. Why should ours, exempt as they are from shame and misery,
+forsake their little ones? There are among us many good partners, and
+many good mothers. But there is a very large number, which increases
+apace, of women who dispense with men.’</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_226" id="Page_226" title="226"> </a>
+“Chéron made in this connection a somewhat strange remark.</p>
+
+<p>“‘We have in regard to sexual characteristics,’ she said, ‘notions
+undreamt of in the barbaric simplicity of the men of the closed era.
+False conclusions were for a long time drawn from the fact that there
+are two sexes, and two only. It was therefrom concluded that a woman
+is absolutely female, and a man absolutely male. In reality, it is not
+thus; there are women who are very much women, while others are very
+little so. These differences, formerly concealed by the costume and
+the mode of life, and disguised by prejudice, make themselves clearly
+manifest in our society. More than that, they become accentuated and
+more marked with each succeeding generation. Ever since women have
+worked like men, and acted and thought like them, many are to be found
+who resemble men. We may some day reach the point of creating neutrals,
+and produce female workers, as in the case of bees. It will prove a
+great benefit, for it will become possible to increase the quantity of
+work without increasing the population in a degree out of proportion to
+the necessaries of life. We entertain the same dread of a deficit in
+and a surplus of births.’</p>
+
+<p>“I thanked Perceval and Chéron for having kindly supplied me with
+information on so interesting<a class="pagenum" name="Page_227" id="Page_227" title="227"> </a> a subject, and I inquired whether
+education was not neglected in collectivist society, and whether
+speculative science and the liberal arts still flourished.</p>
+
+<p>“The following is old Morin’s reply to my question:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Education, in all its degrees, is highly developed. The comrades all
+know something; they do not know the same things, nor have they learnt
+anything useless. No longer is any time lost in the study of law and
+theology. Each one selects from the arts and sciences what suits him.
+We still possess many ancient works, although the greater part of the
+works printed before the new era have perished. Books are still printed
+in greater quantity than ever. And yet typography is on the point of
+disappearing. Phonography will take its place. Poets and novelists are
+already being published phonographically, while in connection with
+theatrical plays, a most ingenious combination of the phono and the
+cinemato rendering both the voice and the play of the actors has been
+devised.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘You have then poets and playwrights?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘We not only have poets, but a poetry of our own. We are the first
+who have delimitated the domain of poetry. Previous to our time, many
+ideas which could have been better expressed in prose were expressed
+in verse. Narratives were unfolded in rhyme. This was a survival of
+the days<a class="pagenum" name="Page_228" id="Page_228" title="228"> </a> when legislative enactments and recipes of rural economy
+were drawn up in measured terms. Nowadays poets merely sing delicate
+subjects which have no meaning, while their grammar and language are
+as proper to them as their rhythm and assonance. As to our stage, it
+is almost exclusively lyric. A precise knowledge of reality and a life
+void of violence have rendered us almost indifferent to drama and
+tragedy. The uniformity of the classes and the equality of the sexes
+have deprived the old comedy of nearly all its subject-matter. But
+never has music been so beautiful and so beloved. We especially admire
+the sonata and the symphony.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Our society is greatly predisposed in favour of the arts of design.
+Many prejudices harmful to painting have vanished. Our life is more
+limpid and more beautiful than the bourgeois life, and we have a
+vivid appreciation of form. Sculpture is in a still more flourishing
+condition than painting, ever since it has taken an intelligent part in
+the ornamentation of public buildings and private dwellings. Never was
+so much done towards the teaching of art. If you will but steer your
+aeroplane above one of our streets, you will be surprised at the number
+of schools and museums.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘To sum matters up, are you happy?’ I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>“Morin shook his head and replied:</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_229" id="Page_229" title="229"> </a>
+“‘It is not in human nature to enjoy perfect happiness. Happiness
+is not attainable without effort, and every effort brings with it
+fatigue and suffering. We have made life endurable to all. That is
+something. Our descendants will do better still. Our organisation is
+not immutable. Not fifty years ago, it was different from what it is
+to-day. Men endowed with subtile powers of observation believe that we
+are on the road to great changes. That may be. However, the forward
+steps in human civilisation will henceforth be harmonious and pacific.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Do you not fear, on the contrary,’ I asked him, ‘that the
+civilisation with which you appear to be satisfied may be destroyed
+by an invasion of barbarians? There still remain in Asia and Africa,
+so you have told me, large black or yellow populations which have not
+entered into your concert. They have armies, while you have none. Were
+they to attack you...’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Our defence is assured. The Americans and the Australians alone could
+enter upon a struggle with us, for they are as learned as ourselves.
+But the ocean separates us and a community of interests makes us sure
+of their amity. As to the capitalistic negroes, they have not got any
+further than the steel cannon, fire-arms and all the old scrap-iron
+of the twentieth century. What could these ancient engines<a class="pagenum" name="Page_230" id="Page_230" title="230"> </a> of war
+do against a discharge of Y-rays? Our frontiers are protected by
+electricity. A zone of lightning encircles the Federation. A little
+spectacled fellow is sitting I know not where, in front of a keyboard.
+He is our one and only soldier. He has but to touch a key in order to
+reduce to dust an army of 500,000 men.’</p>
+
+<p>“Morin ceased speaking for a moment; then he continued, speaking more
+deliberately:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Were our civilisation threatened, it would not be by any outside
+enemy. It would be by the enemies from within.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘There are such enemies, then?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘We have the anarchists. They are many, fiery, and intelligent. Our
+chemists and our professors of sciences and letters are almost to a man
+anarchists. They attribute to the regulation of labour and production
+the majority of the evils which still afflict society. They argue that
+humanity will not be happy except in the spontaneous harmony to be born
+of the total destruction of civilisation. They are dangerous. They
+would be still more so were we to repress them. To do this, however, we
+have neither the means nor the desire. We do not possess any power of
+coercion or repression, and we get along very well without it. In the
+barbaric ages, men nurtured great illusions in regard to the efficacy
+of penalties. Our fathers suppressed the judiciary<a class="pagenum" name="Page_231" id="Page_231" title="231"> </a> system entirely.
+They no longer required it. With the suppression of private property,
+they simultaneously suppressed theft and swindling. Ever since we have
+carried electric protectors, assaults are no longer to be feared. Man
+has come to be respected by man. Crimes of passion are still and will
+ever be committed. However, such crimes as these, if left unpunished,
+become rarer. Our entire judiciary body is composed of elected
+arbitrators who try gratuitously all offences and disputes.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I rose, and thanking my comrades for their kindness, I begged Morin
+the favour of putting one more question to him.</p>
+
+<p>“‘You no longer have any religion?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Quite the contrary; we have a large number of religions, some of
+them somewhat novel. To mention France only, we have the religion of
+humanity, positivism, Christianity, and spiritualism. In some countries
+there are still some Catholics, but they are few and split up into
+sects, as the result of schisms which <a name="occurred" id="occurred"></a><ins
+title="Original has occured">occurred</ins> in the
+twentieth century, when Church and State drifted apart. For a long time
+now there has not been any Pope.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘You are mistaken,’ said Michel. ‘There is still a Pope. It is by a
+mere chance that I know of him. He is Pius XXV., dyer, Via dell’ Orso,
+in Rome.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘the Pope is a dyer!’”</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_232" id="Page_232" title="232"> </a>
+“‘What is there surprising about that! He must perforce have a trade,
+just as everybody else.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘But his Church?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘He is recognised by a few thousands, in Europe.’</p>
+
+<p>“With these words, we parted. Michel informed me that I should find a
+lodging in the neighbourhood, and that Chéron would conduct me to it on
+her way home.</p>
+
+<p>“The night was illuminated with an opalescent light both powerful and
+soft. It gave the foliage the sheen of enamel. I walked by the side of
+Chéron.</p>
+
+<p>“I looked her over. Her flat-soled shoes gave firmness to her gait
+and balance to her body; although her male habiliments made her seem
+smaller than she was, and in spite of her having one hand in her
+pocket, her perfectly simple carriage did not lack dignity. She gazed
+freely to the right and left of her. She was the first woman in whom I
+had noticed the air of a curious and amused lounger. Her features, seen
+from under her tam-o’-shanter, were refined and strongly defined. She
+both irritated and charmed me. I was in dread that she might consider
+me stupid and ridiculous. It was, to say the least, plain that my
+personality inspired her with supreme indifference. Nevertheless, of
+a sudden she asked me what my trade might be. I answered at haphazard
+that I was an electrician.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_233" id="Page_233" title="233"> </a>
+“‘So am I,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>“I prudently put an end to the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>“Unheard-of sounds were filling the night air with their calm rhythmic
+noise, and I listened in affright to the respiration of the monstrous
+genius of this new world.</p>
+
+<p>“The more I looked at the female electrician, the more did I feel a
+desire for her, a desire fanned by a dash of antipathy.</p>
+
+<p>“‘So of course,’ I said to her of a sudden, ‘you have regulated love
+scientifically, and ’tis a matter which no longer causes any one
+uneasiness.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘You are mistaken,’ she replied. ‘We have naturally got beyond the mad
+imbecility of the closed era, and the whole domain of human physiology
+is henceforth freed from legal barbarisms and theological terrors. We
+are no longer the prey to an erroneous and cruel conception of duty.
+But the laws governing the attraction between body and body are still
+a mystery to us. The spirit of the species is what it ever was and
+ever shall be, violent and capricious. Now, just as formerly, instinct
+remains stronger than reason. Our superiority over the ancients lies
+less in the knowledge of it than in proclaiming it. We have within us a
+force capable of creating worlds, to wit, desire, and you would have us
+regulate it. ’Tis asking too much of us. We are no longer barbarians.
+We have not yet<a class="pagenum" name="Page_234" id="Page_234" title="234"> </a> become wise. Collectivism altogether ignores all that
+appertains to sexual relations. These relations are what they may be,
+most often tolerable, rarely delicious, and at times horrible. But,
+comrade, do not imagine that love no longer troubles any one.’</p>
+
+<p>“I could not discuss such extraordinary ideas. I diverted the
+conversation to the temperament of women. Chéron informed me that there
+were three kinds, those who were amorously disposed, those prompted by
+curiosity, and the third, indifferent. I thereupon asked her to which
+class she belonged.</p>
+
+<p>“She looked at me somewhat haughtily and said:</p>
+
+<p>“‘There are also various kinds of men. First and foremost are the
+impertinent ones....’</p>
+
+<p>“Her reply caused her to appear far more contemporaneous than I had
+until then believed her to be. For that reason I began to speak to her
+the language used by me on similar occasions. After a few trifling and
+frivolous words I said to her:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Will you grant me a favour and tell me your first name?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I have none?’</p>
+
+<p>“She perceived that this seemed to vex me, for she resumed with some
+show of pique:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Do you think that a woman must, in order to be pleasing to you,
+possess a first name, like the ladies of former days, a baptismal name
+such as Marguerite, Thérèse, or Jeanne?’</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="Page_235" id="Page_235" title="235"> </a>
+“‘You are a living proof to the contrary.’</p>
+
+<p>“I sought her gaze, but it did not respond to mine. She seemed not to
+have heard. I could no longer entertain doubts: she was a coquette. I
+was delighted. I told her that I found her charming, that I loved her,
+and I told her so over and over again. She suffered me to go on with my
+speeches, and finally asked:</p>
+
+<p>“‘What do you mean by all this!’</p>
+
+<p>“I became more pressing.</p>
+
+<p>“‘She reproached me for taking liberties with her, exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Your ways are those of a savage.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I do not find acceptance with you?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I do not say so.’</p>
+
+<p>“Chéron, Chéron, would it cost you any great effort to...’</p>
+
+<p>“We sat down together on a bench over which an elm cast its shade. I
+took her hand, and carried it to my lips ... of a sudden, I no longer
+felt, no longer saw anything, and I found myself lying in bed at home.
+I rubbed my eyes, smarting with the morning light, and I saw my valet
+who, standing before me with a stupid look, was saying to me:</p>
+
+<p>“It is nine o’clock, sir. You told me to wake you at nine o’clock, sir.
+I have come to tell you, sir, that it is nine o’clock?”</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter"><a class="pagenum" name="Page_236" id="Page_236" title="236"> </a></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a class="pagenum" name="Page_237" id="Page_237" title="237"> </a>
+<a name="vi" id="vi"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<div class="width80">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-h_drop.jpg" width="80" height="88" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="uppercase">Hippolyte</span> Dufresne was warmly congratulated by his friends on his
+finishing the reading of his story.</p>
+
+<p>Nicole Langelier, applying to him the words of Critias to Triephon,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>“You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people
+of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a
+night.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not likely,” remarked Joséphin Leclerc, “that the future
+will be such as you have seen it. I do not wish for the coming of
+socialism, but I dread it not. Collectivism at the helm would be quite
+another thing than is imagined. Who was it who said, carrying back his
+thoughts to the time of Constantine and of the Church’s early triumphs:
+‘Christianity is triumphant, but its triumph is subject to the
+conditions imposed by life on all political and religious parties. All
+of them, whatever they may be, undergo so complete a transformation<a class="pagenum" name="Page_238" id="Page_238" title="238"> </a>
+in the struggle that after victory there remains of themselves but the
+name and a few symbols of the last idea’?”</p>
+
+<p>“Must we then give up the idea of knowing the future?” asked M. Goubin.</p>
+
+<p>But Giacomo Boni, who when delving down into a few feet of soil had
+descended from the present period to the stone age, remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“Upon the whole, humanity changes little. What has been shall be.”</p>
+
+<p>“No doubt,” replied Jean Boilly, “man, or that which we call man,
+changes little. We belong to a definite species. The evolution of the
+species is of necessity included in the definition of the species. It
+is impossible to conceive humanity subsequent to its transformation. A
+transformed species is a lost species. But what reason is there for us
+to believe that man is the end of the evolution of life upon the earth?
+Why suppose that his birth has exhausted the creative forces of nature,
+and that the universal mother of the flora and fauna should, after
+having shaped him, become for ever barren. A natural philosopher, who
+does not stand in fear of his own ideas, H. G. Wells, has said: ‘Man
+is not final.’ No indeed, man is neither the beginning nor the end of
+terrestrial life. Long before him, all over the globe, animated forces
+were multiplying in the depths of the sea, in the mud of the strand,
+in<a class="pagenum" name="Page_239" id="Page_239" title="239"> </a> the forests, lakes, prairies, and tree-topped mountains. After him,
+new forms will go on taking shape. A future race, born perhaps of our
+own, but having perchance no bond of origin with us, will succeed us in
+the empire of the planet. These new spirits of the earth will ignore or
+despise us. The monuments of our arts, should they discover vestiges of
+them, will have no meaning for them. Rulers of the future, whose mind
+we can no more divine than the palæopithekos of the Siwalik Mountains
+was able to forecast the trains of thought of Aristotle, Newton, and
+Poincaré.”</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+<div class="tn">
+<p class="center">Transcriber’s Note:</p>
+
+<p class="noi">Quotation marks have been standardised. Spelling and hyphenation have
+been retained as they appear in the original publication except as
+follows:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Page 8 Καὶ εμοιγε δοκειτε ἐπὶ λευκαδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείροων<br />
+καταδαρθεντες τοσαῡτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτός ὄυσης.<br />
+<i>changed to</i><br />
+<a href="#Greek">Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων<br />
+καταδαρθέντες τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς<br />
+οὔσης.</a></li>
+
+<li>Page 63 since his tenous substance <i>changed to</i><br />
+since his <a href="#tenuous">tenuous</a> substance</li>
+
+<li>Page 65 would facedeath for a <i>changed to</i><br />
+would <a href="#face">face death</a> for a</li>
+
+<li>Page 72 are quarelling over <i>changed to</i><br />
+are <a href="#quarrelling">quarrelling</a> over</li>
+
+<li>Page 111 and by a similiar <i>changed to</i><br />
+and by a <a href="#similar">similar</a></li>
+
+<li>Page 120 personages of the diologue are <i>changed to</i><br />
+personages of the <a href="#dialogue">dialogue</a> are</li>
+
+<li>Page 184 it as absurd <i>changed to</i><br />
+<a href="#is">is</a> as absurd</li>
+
+<li>Page 191 were on the whole androginous in <i>changed to</i><br />
+were on the whole <a href="#androgynous">androgynous</a> in</li>
+
+<li>Page 201 produced and consumed? <i>changed to</i><br />
+produced and <a href="#fullstop">consumed.</a></li>
+
+<li>Page 231 schisms which occured in <i>changed to</i><br />
+schisms which <a href="#occurred">occurred</a> in</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49092 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-22 00:33:34 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-22 00:33:34 -0800
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