e whole. Isn't that so?"

"I believe it is."

"I proceed. In nature laws become more obscure, according as more
complicated objects of knowledge turn up. We all clearly see the law
of the triangle, and the law of oxygen or of carbon with the same
clearness. These laws appear to us as being without exception. But then
comes the mineral, and we begin to see variations; in this form it
exerts one attraction, in that form a different one. We ascend to
the vegetable and find a sort of surprise-package. The surprises are
centupled in the animal; and are raised to an unknown degree in man.
What is the law of man, as man? We do not know it, probably we shall
never know it. Right and justice may be truths, but they will always
be fractional truths. Traditional morality is a pragmatism, useful and
efficacious for social life, for well-ordered life; but at the bottom,
without reality. Summing all this up: first, life is a labyrinth
which has no Ariadne's thread but one,--action; secondly, man is upheld
in his high qualities by force and struggle. Those are my conclusions."

"Clever devil! I don't know what to say to you."

Alzugaray asserted that, without taking it upon him to say whether his
friend's ideas were good or bad, they had no practical value; but
Caesar insisted once and many times on the advantages he saw in his
metaphysics.

ENCHIRIDION SAPIENTIAE

Caesar remained in the same sphere during the whole period of his law
course, always seeking, according to his own words, to add one wheel
more to his machine.

His life contained few incidents; summers he went to Valencia, and
there, in the villa, he read and talked with the peasants. His mother,
devoted solely to the Church, bothered herself little about her son.

Caesar ended his studies, and on his coming of age, they gave him his
share of his father's estate.

Incontinently he took the train, he went to Paris, he looked up Yarza.
He explained to him his vague projects of action. Yarza listened
attentively, and said:

"Perhaps it will appear foolish to you, but I am going to give you a
book I wrote, which I should like you to read. It's called _Enchiridion
Sapientiae_. In my youth I was something of a Latinist. In these pages,
less than a hundred, I have gathered my observations about the financial
and political world. It might as well be called _Contribution to
Common-sense, or Neo-Machiavellianism_. If you find that it helps you,
keep it."

Caesar r