ake more evident the faults of him who uses them without
discernment or without conscience. The wheelwork of the great modern
machine is infinitely delicate. Carelessness, incompetence or corruption
may produce here disturbances of far greater gravity than would have
threatened the more or less rudimentary organism of the society of the
past. There is need then of looking to the quality of the individual
called upon to contribute in any measure to the workings of this
mechanism. This individual should be at once solid and pliable, inspired
with the central law of life--to be one's self and fraternal. Everything
within us and without us becomes simplified and unified under the
influence of this law, which is the same for everybody and by which each
one should guide his actions; for our essential interests are not
opposing, they are identical. In cultivating the spirit of simplicity,
we should arrive, then, at giving to public life a stronger cohesion.

The phenomena of decomposition and destruction that we see there may all
be attributed to the same cause,--lack of solidity and cohesion. It will
never be possible to say how contrary to social good are the trifling
interests of caste, of coterie, of church, the bitter strife for
personal welfare, and, by a fatal consequence, how destructive these
things are of individual happiness. A society in which each member is
preoccupied with his own well-being, is organized disorder. This is all
that we learn from the irreconcilable conflicts of our uncompromising
egoism.

We too much resemble those people who claim the rights of family only to
gain advantage from them, not to do honor to the connection. On all
rounds of the social ladder we are forever putting forth claims. We all
take the ground that we are creditors: no one recognizes the fact that
he is a debtor, and our dealings with our fellows consist in inviting
them, in tones sometimes amiable, sometimes arrogant, to discharge their
indebtedness to us. No good thing is attained in this spirit. For in
fact it is the spirit of privilege, that eternal enemy of universal law,
that obstacle to brotherly understanding which is ever presenting itself
anew.

* * * * *

In a lecture delivered in 1882, M. Renan said that a nation is "a
spiritual family," and he added: "The essential of a nation is that all
the individuals should have many things in common, and also that all
should have forgotten much." It