"Science asserts and demonstrates it. Man, intelligent and free,
is an animal wholly unpremeditated upon this planet. Produced by
unexpected combinations and haphazard transformations, in the midst
of a general subordination of matter, he figures as a dissonance and
a revolt!

"Nature has engendered without having conceived him. The result is
as if a turkey-hen had unconsciously hatched the egg of an eagle.
Terrified at the monster, she has sought to control it, and has
overloaded it with instincts, commonly called duties, and police
regulations known as religion. Each one of these shackles broken,
each one of these servitudes overthrown, marks a step toward the
thorough emancipation of humanity.

"I must say to you, however, that I die in the faith of my century,
believing in matter uncreated, all-powerful, and eternal--the Nature
of the ancients. There have been in all ages philosophers who have
had conceptions of the truth. But ripe to-day, it has become the
common property of all who are strong enough to stand it--for, in
sooth, this latest religion of humanity is food fit only for the
strong. It carries sadness with it, for it isolates man; but it
also involves grandeur, making man absolutely free, or, as it were,
a very god. It leaves him no actual duties except to himself, and
it opens a superb field to one of brain and courage.

"The masses still remain, and must ever remain, submissive under the
yoke of old, dead religions, and under the tyranny of instincts.
There will still be seen very much the same condition of things as
at present in Paris; a society the brain of which is atheistic, and
the heart religious. And at bottom there will be no more belief in
Christ than in Jupiter; nevertheless, churches will continue to be
built mechanically. There are no longer even Deists; for the old
chimera of a personal, moral God-witness, sanction, and judge,--is
virtually extinct; and yet hardly a word is said, or a line written,
or a gesture made, in public or private life, which does not ever
affirm that chimera. This may have its uses perchance, but it is
nevertheless despicable. Slip forth from the common herd, my son,
think for yourself, and write your own catechism upon a virgin page.

"As for myself, my life has been a failure, because I was born many
years too soon. As yet the earth and the heavens were