the conflict in
France between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.

* * * * *

This principle may be verified in other domains than that of material
well-being. We shall speak only of education and liberty. We remember
when prophets in good repute announced that to transform this wicked
world into an abode fit for the gods, all that was needed was the
overthrow of tyranny, ignorance, and want--those three dread powers so
long in league. To-day, other preachers proclaim the same gospel. We
have seen that the unquestionable diminution of want has made man
neither better nor happier. Has this desirable result been more nearly
attained through the great care bestowed upon instruction? It does not
yet appear so, and this failure is the despair of our national
educators.

Then shall we stop the people's ears, suppress public instruction, close
the schools? By no means. But education, like the mass of our age's
inventions, is after all only a tool; everything depends upon the
workman who uses it.... So it is with liberty. It is fatal or lifegiving
according to the use made of it. Is it liberty still, when it is the
prerogative of criminals or heedless blunderers? Liberty is an
atmosphere of the higher life, and it is only by a slow and patient
inward transformation that one becomes capable of breathing it.

All life must have its law, the life of man so much the more than that
of inferior beings, in that it is more precious and of nicer adjustment.
This law for man is in the first place an external law, but it may
become an internal law. When man has once recognized the inner law, and
bowed before it, through this reverence and voluntary submission he is
ripe for liberty: so long as there is no vigorous and sovereign inner
law, he is incapable of breathing its air; for he will be drunken with
it, maddened, morally slain. The man who guides his life by inner law,
can no more live servile to outward authority than can the full-grown
bird live imprisoned in the eggshell. But the man who has not yet
attained to governing himself can no more live under the law of liberty
than can the unfledged bird live without its protective covering. These
things are terribly simple, and the series of demonstrations old and new
that proves them, increases daily under our eyes. And yet we are as far
as ever from understanding even the elements of this most important law.
In our democracy, how many are there, gre