to the conditions necessary for
their production in the country (yet another word which has become
meaningless) condemned him to live a wild, solitary life, far from his
fellows. As for his herds, they were acquainted with the charms of
social life, but he had not the slightest inkling of what it meant.

The towns, to which people were so astonished that there should be a
desire to emigrate, were the only centres, rare and widely scattered as
they were, in which life in society was then known. But to what extent
does it not appear to have been adulterated, and attenuated by animal
and vegetable life? Another fossil peculiar to these regions is the
artisan. Was the relation of the worker to his employer, of the artisan
class to the other classes of the population, of these classes between
themselves a really social relation? Not the least in the world! Certain
sophists, who were called economists, and who were to our sociologists
of to-day what the alchemists formerly were to the chemists or the
astrologers to the astronomers, had given credit, it is true, to this
error--that society essentially consists in an exchange of services.
From this point of view, which, moreover, is quite out of date, the
social bond could never be closer than that between the ass and the ass
driver, the ox and drover, the sheep and the shepherd. Society, we now
know, consists in the exchange of reflections. Mutually to ape one
another, and by dint of accumulated apings diversely combined to create
an originality is the important thing. Reciprocal service is only an
accessory. That is why the urban life of former days being principally
founded on the organic and natural, rather than on the social relation
of producer to consumer, or of workman to employer, was itself only a
very imperfect kind of social life, and accordingly the source of
endless disagreements.

If it has been possible for us to realise the most perfect and the most
intense social life that has ever been seen, it is thanks to the extreme
simplicity of our strictly so-called wants. At a time when man was
"panivorous" and omnivorous, the craving for food was broken up into an
infinity of petty ramifications. To-day it is confined to eating meat
which has been preserved in the best of refrigerators. Within the space
of an hour each morning, a single member of society by the employment of
our ingenious transport machinery feeds a thousand of his kind. The need
of clothing has bee