ince I made these remarks I have asked myself the cause of the
sterility of the learned bodies, and I do not hesitate to say to-day,
that it is because scientists refuse to declare themselves fools, and it
is to this lack of sincerity that they doubtless owe the punishment that
paralyzes their genius.

How can these men fail to take seriously the little knowledge to which
they cling and their fortune and renown; how can these wise men, to whom
the world pays incessant homage, consent meekly to confess the infirmity
of their reason? They feign, on the contrary, even when crushed beneath
the Divine splendor, an air of great importance; and when the Omnipotent
in His mercy deigns to bend to their low level, to lay open to them the
treasures of His sovereign thought, do you think that in token of the
sacred and respectful admiration which they owe in return for such
goodness, they will prostrate themselves like the Seraphim whose
knowledge assuredly equals the few notions which they adorn with that
title? Ah! far from it. You little know these scientists, when you
impute to them an act which they would qualify as contemptible and would
declare unworthy of a free-thinker! They stand erect, on the contrary,
with head held high, insolently laying claim, by virtue of I know not
what conquest of the human mind, to judge the eternal and immovable
light of the Divine Reason.

Episode IV.

My retrospective journey from this point of departure seemed destined to
be even more full of observations than that which preceded it. My day
had been so full of work, so fruitful in unexpected discoveries, that it
was absolutely necessary for me to stop at this first station.

After a few days of rest I naturally resumed my walk, toward the garden
of the Tuileries, whither I was led by an instinct full of promise.
There, in fact, fresh re-appearances were not long in adding light to
that with which I was still dazzled!

I remember that I had been vaguely struck by the contemplative attitude
of a mother toward her child. The reason why this attitude struck me
even in the midst of my absorption in search of notes relative to the
thumb, was, first, because this attitude was a contrast to that assumed
by most of the nurses under the action of the same feeling; and, in the
next place, it seemed to deny the contemplative forms which I had
deduced from my first discovery, and which rested upon such motives as
the following: That a paint