indication of such a
religion? Has not the idea of the duality of God and the Universe been
brushed aside, and is not the principle of unity, _monisme_, becoming
more and more evident--unity leading to solidarity, and the sole law of
life proceeding by evolution from the first point of the ether that
condensed to create the world? But if precursors, scientists and
philosophers--Darwin, Fourier and all the others--have sown the seed of
to-morrow's religion by casting the good word to the passing breeze, how
many centuries will doubtless be required to raise the crop! People
always forget that before Catholicism grew up and reigned in the
sunlight, it spent four centuries in germinating and sprouting from the
soil. Well, then, grant some centuries to this religion of science of
whose sprouting there are signs upon all sides, and by-and-by the
admirable ideas of some Fourier will be seen expanding and forming a new
gospel, with desire serving as the lever to raise the world, work
accepted by one and all, honoured and regulated as the very mechanism of
natural and social life, and the passions of man excited, contented and
utilised for human happiness! The universal cry of Justice, which rises
louder and louder, in a growing clamour from the once silent multitude,
the people that have so long been duped and preyed upon, is but a cry for
this happiness towards which human beings are tending, the happiness that
embodies the complete satisfaction of man's needs, and the principle of
life loved for its own sake, in the midst of peace and the expansion of
every force and every joy. The time will come when this Kingdom of God
will be set upon the earth; so why not close that other deceptive
paradise, even if the weak-minded must momentarily suffer from the
destruction of their illusions; for it is necessary to operate even with
cruelty on the blind if they are to be extricated from their misery, from
their long and frightful night of ignorance!

All at once a feeling of deep joy came over Pierre. A child's faint cry,
the wakening cry of his son Jean had drawn him from his reverie. And he
had suddenly remembered that he himself was now saved, freed from
falsehood and fright, restored to good and healthy nature. How he
quivered as he recalled that he had once fancied himself lost, blotted
out of life, and that a prodigy of love had extricated him from his
nothingness, still strong and sound, since that dear child of his was
there,