from lack of
paper, we are obliged to write on slates, on pillars, obelisks, on the
broad panels of marble, and this necessity, in addition to compelling us
to adopt a sober style and contributing to the formation of taste,
prevents the daily newspapers from reappearing, to the great benefit of
the optic nerves and the lobes of the brain. It was, by the way, an
immense misfortune for "pre-salvationist" man to possess textile plants
which allowed him to stereotype without the slightest trouble on rags of
paper without the slightest value, all his ideas, idle or serious, piled
indiscriminately one on the other. Now, before graving our thoughts on a
panel of rock, we take time to reflect on our subject. Yet another bane
among our primitive forefathers was tobacco. At present we no longer
smoke, we can no longer smoke. The public health is accordingly
magnificent.

V

REGENERATION

It does not fall within the scope of my rapid sketch to relate date by
date the laborious vicissitudes of humanity since its settlement within
the planet from the year 1 of the era of Salvation to the year 596, in
which I write these lines in chalk on slabs of schist. I should only
like to bring out for my contemporaries, who might very well fail to
notice them (for we barely observe what we have always before our eyes),
the distinctive and original features of this modern civilisation of
which we are so justly proud. Now that after many abortive trials and
agonizing convulsions it has succeeded in taking its final shape, we can
clearly establish its essential characteristics. It consists in the
complete elimination of living nature, whether animal or vegetable, man
only excepted. That has produced, so to say, a purification of society.
Secluded thus from every influence of the natural milieu into which it
was hitherto plunged and confined, the social milieu was for the first
time able to reveal and display its true virtues, and the real social
bond appeared in all its vigour and purity. It might be said that
destiny had desired to make in our case an extended sociological
experiment for its own edification by placing us in such extraordinarily
unique conditions.[1] The problem, in a way, was to learn, what would
social man become if committed to his own keeping, yet left to
himself--furnished with all the intellectual acquisitions accumulated
through a remote past by human geniuses, but deprived of the assistance
of all other living