For labour not only constitutes the elements of society, it establishes a right-the right of property.

The earth has been given to all; the fruits of labour are given to individuals.

This is what those sophists will not understand who attribute property to force, and who seek its origin in the right of the first occupant; as if violence were anything else than a fact, or could constitute a right.

Property has its roots in man himself; it is the want of his being, the product of his intelligence, the link of society, the right of labour. Those who talk of annihilating it, and of establishing a republican and monkish community, in which all goods would be in common, prove only one thing, viz. the complete ignorance in which they are respecting the faculties of man and the laws of nature. To destroy property is, though under another name, to destroy society.

Man at his birth is naked and possesses nothing. Later in life, by his industry he acquires clothing, a house, a garden; thus it is that he takes possession of the earth, changes its aspect, and makes it his property by the right of labour. From his wants and his weakness, his wellbeing, his right, and his sovereignty arise.

And this law, the action of which has been prepared by our intelligence and by our nakedness; this law, of which the yoke appears to us so burthensome, and of which the result is so magnificent, takes, as we have just said, its root in the human heart. The child wishes to possess: he scarcely yet knows himself, and he already understands the meaning of property. If one of his comrades lend him a plaything, he amuses himself with it, but his pleasure is incomplete,possession is wanting. He desires, and still desires until he can say, "This is mine."

And further; labour is one of the necessities of our

nature

one of the conditions of the duration of families and of the perpetuity of races, as is proved by the observations of Fresnel. This young philosopher, whose discoveries a few years ago obliterated at once nearly half of the book of Laplace, the Système du Monde, and the whole of the great work of Newton on Light-this great genius, whose premature death science has to deplore, had remarked that whenever four generations succeeded each other, without occupying themselves with manual labour, the children which constitute the fifth generation die young, and with diseases of the chest; labour with the arms being indispensable to the proper development of the organs of respiration.

History likewise corroborates this observation. It shows us the feudal nobility strong and robust, as long as they gave themselves up to the rude toils of arms and of chivalry, but weak, debilitated, and sickly, from the time that the invention of gunpowder had restored them to idleness.

The twofold exercise of the mind and body is, then, the law of nature. Nature orders us to cultivate, to build, to create, to control, with iron, with fire, by our genius; and she commands this, not to a class of men, but to all men; she desires not that some should exhaust themselves, while others remain idle. Her justice is universal and without exception: all must obey, for upon obedience depends the conservation of races, whereas their cessation ensues upon the infraction of the law.

Thus, property is founded, on the one hand, upon the desire of possessing, which is natural to man; and on the other hand, on the necessity of labour, on which depend the perfecting of nature, the life of families, and the duration of races. These two laws harmonize admirably with another moral law of our code, viz. sociability.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

LIFE AND DEATH-A LAW OF NATURE.

"Qui apprendroit les hommes à mourir, leur apprendroit à vivre. Vostre mort est une des pièces de l'ordre de l'univers : c'est une pièce de la vie du monde."

MONTAIGNE.

God has

DEATH is neither a law of hatred nor a law of vengeance; it is the condition of that which is. opposed it to life in order to maintain life.

The flowers of spring must fade, in order that autumn may produce its fruits; generations must pass away, that love may produce its fruits. Life and death act like a single power the one is charged to clear the place, the other to refil it; their visible end is not to create, not to destroy, but to perpetuate the great spectacle of nature. Thus, there is nothing more remarkable than the harmony of these two powers, and, if we may so express it, than the equality of their labour. They advance at an equal pace, without either overtaking or passing each other; life sows, death reaps; and the reproductions and losses counterpoise each other. The destiny of the world depends upon the preservation of this equilibrium. You could not give death an advantage over life, or to life over death, without annihilating creation, for creation is the work of death as well as of life.

And, this is so true, that in order to cause life to cease upon the earth, it would be sufficient to establish a single exception to the law of death, I do not say in the human race, but in the most ephemeral being-a plant, a gnat, a

fly, a fish. The seeds of a single poppy would cover the earth in six years, and no more than three years would be required for a whiting to encumber the seas with its progeny. Fortunately, death is always on the watch. Fore. seeing and preserving, it prevents these frightful multiplications, without ever annihilating the species; it saves the world from the excess of life.

In this respect, we will dare to say, that death is but the instrument of life. All its power is reduced to changing the forms of matter which it cannot destroy, and which life again takes from it. Thus, death has only power over the form. The essence of all things escapes it. A similar fact presents to our souls something more than hope!

It is, then, from not knowing death that we surround it with apprehension. It is a crime for a man to kill a man, because he takes away that which he cannot restore; but in the hands of God, it opens out a passage to the human race; it calls generations upon the earth. Were the work of death to be suspended, this immense stream would cease to flow. When the perceptible object of death is to multiply existences, can its imperceptible object be to annihilate?

And yet, moralists do not cease to tell us of the terrors of death: some regard it as a scourge; other as a punishment. But if death be a law of vengeance, life is a law of wrath. Wherefore, then, do so many joys and hopes exist in our hearts, so many sublime inspirations in our souls? Wherefore this sun, these harvests, this verdure the air, perfumes, colours, and the delightful harmonies which indicate more goodness than power? Wherefore is life, in fact, this creation of a double self, (moi,) one of which being altogether material takes possession of nature, while the other detaches itself from nature to take possession of heaven; for our life on earth is

double, and promises us two worlds. It is true that we arrive in this world without defence and without intelligence, but we also arrive in it beneath the safeguard of maternal tenderness. Then come the sports of early infancy, then the illusions of youth and love, which would suffice to our happiness, since they raise us up to God. We want for nothing in the voyage, and Providence, which foresees all its necessities, has not forgotten its end. It bestows upon us the sentiment of infinity, which it refused to us at our entry into life.

We must dare to say, however singular it may appear, that we apprehend death because we shut our eyes to the benefits of life. If we knew better what God has done for us, we should also know better what he reserves for us. Our double life is a heavenly gift of love and goodness-a magnificent, a gratuitous gift. We were not, and here is a power which was from all eternity, that calls us not only to live and to feel, as all else lives and feels, but also to love him. This power which was, this divinity which created, gave us at first innocence and ignorance, and subsequently opened to us all the paths of imagination and of knowledge. By innocence we attain to the happiness of virtue, and by ignorance to the happiness of knowing. These two first conditions of life, which seem to attest our weakness, thus become the source of our sweetest pleasures; ignorance is the attribute of childhood, it comprises in an unlimited futurity all the joys of love, and a world to contemplate. What a multitude of reasons for loving life! But in proportion as the soul developes itself, as it feels itself free, eternal, infinite, more powerful than all the powers of nature; in proportion as the sentiment of the sublime raises it above worlds and suns, and in proportion as it frees itself from all the pains and pleasures of the flesh, does it imagine a something beyond all that it feels