true or false, according to the judgment of times, places, and men. Fool! wouldst thou estimate the limits of human intelligence by the extent of thine own? Open thine eyes. Reason is not in fault, because within these limits it does not appear. Truth is not fluctuating, because there is no truth within the scope of thy vision. That which thou perceivest are our vices, our passions, our opinions, our ambitions, which we would cause to be worshipped. Truth is beyond their sphere.

Beyond their sphere; there only are the laws of nature to be sought. We invoke in our turn the judgment of God upon all questions which concern us. It is God himself who will teach us that which we should do in order to be just, that which we are to believe in order to be happy. He will tell us what is virtue, and what is crime; whether we honour him by rejecting his gifts; whether we obey his laws in abusing them; whether religion should inspire us with indulgence, or arm us with wrath and cruelty; whether it be permitted us to persecute men; to deceive them; to strip, mutilate, or kill them, either in the interest of an ambition, or in the interest of our conscience. He will tell us all these things, and in proportion as his answer shall strike upon the ear of nations, they will know the truth, and will hold out their hands to each other as brethren.

This answer is comprised in the small number of laws of which we have presented the sketch; laws of love and life, criteria of all truth, which are unanswerable by sophistry, since they verify the thoughts of man by the thoughts of God.

And, truly, I do not believe there exists on the earth a being endowed with reason, who would dare to efface with a firm hand the articles of this code, under the pretext of their being erroneous or false. How could we efface

them without renouncing some portions of ourselves; without ceasing to be men; that is to say, free, intelligent, and loving?

In fact, all the faculties of man correspond to some laws of nature; so that in order to degrade the one, the other must necessarily be violated. This is the twofold labour of our prejudices and of despotic governments.

We may conclude, that wherever man is degraded, there is a violation of the laws of nature; that is to say, a violation of justice and of truth; the laws of nature require that man should be complete.

In order

Of these laws five have their source in our soul, and radiate from man to nature; ten have their source in the physical world, and radiate from nature to man. that truth should be always present, God has impressed it both within us and around us; and in order that the laws which contain it should appear to us always pleasant, he has made them to partake of the sentiment of love, which raises us up to him.

These fifteen laws do not form the only ones of the code of nature, and yet they embrace the entire moral world.

The sentiment of the divinity is the love of God. The sociability of the human race is the love of men. The other laws are for the most part but developments or modifications of these two fundamental laws, which all our moral codes thus express-Love God and man.

Apply this principle to the political and religious codes which divide the world, and they will strip themselves by degrees of all the barbarities and of all the abjection which dishonour them. There is a something serious in the loss of the least national good: it is a physical evil which always entails a moral evil, and this evil is so penetrating, that we draw back with apprehension when we would measure its depth. When the Emperor of China, for instance, isolates

his people from all others, one imagines that it is at most but a question of the least of their liberties, the right of travelling over the globe, a right of which the multitude would never profit: the prison is vast; it is an empire, a world, rich at the same time in all the treasures of nature, and all the sciences of ancient Egypt. Well, this law, to which you ascribe so little power, has sufficed to vilify the most industrious, and perhaps the most intelligent people on the earth. Enter the study of a literary Chinese, proud of his knowledge of four thousand years; he will tell you that the earth is a flat and square surface, of which China occupies the centre; that the sun only rises on this part of the world; and that the other nations, abandoned by Heaven, are scattered here and there on the edge of an abyss, without intelligence and without light, as the Esquimaux are represented on the desolate shore of the ocean. Thus, the earth is square, and flat, the Celestial Empire alone composes the universe, and the sun only shines for the Chinese. Such is the fruit of the law which separates them from the human race.

And we must not think that this abjection re-acts only upon their intelligence; it re-acts upon their morality, it precipitates them into the ignorance of the Creator, the greatest evil which exists upon earth. A people who know nothing of the world it inhabits, nothing of the surrounding nations, cannot form a just idea either of the general laws of nature, nor of the benefits of Providence, nor of the glory of God. By cutting itself off from the human race, it has cut itself off from truth.

We may judge from this example of the influence which the most simple application of the laws of nature would exert upon the civilisation and the happiness of the world. Would legislators but deign to take them for a guide, and all the crimes which have become established as principles,

all the idolatry which has been raised into a religion, infanticide, concubinage, polygamy, mutilations, slavery, these lepers of the East; castes, privileges, vassalage, the celibacy of priests, monastic reclusions, religious suicides, these vices and degradations of civilised Europe; the penalty of death, the fratricide which no law, no human convention can legalise; and lastly, war, the greatest of wrongs, and the only one which with the penalty of death still exists all over the world, would disappear. All these juridical crimes, all these glorious or legislative murders, would vanish before the law of nature, like the clouds of darkness before the sun. Already, by instinctively approximating ourselves to this divine law, we have effaced from our codes the double bondage of the earth and of man. Our tribunals have lost the power of being cruel, and our kings the privilege of being unjust. Civil liberty, the liberty of worship, liberty of thought, form, together with equality of rights, and equality in the eye of the law, a legislation by which the dignity of man is at last respected, and this first step in the path of universal justice has commenced the deliverance of all nations; the example is now given, the rights are conquered, and Europe is contemplating us.

If I were an absolute king, and my eyes were directed towards France, I should see her without apprehension resuscitate the formidable armies of Napoleon; but if I saw her legislators opening everywhere schools, founding colonies, protecting and enlightening the masses, extending knowledge, increasing the general welfare, giving to each citizen the power of raising himself to the rank to which his intelligence and his virtue would entitle him; in a word, generously advancing in the paths of justice and liberty— oh it is then that I should tremble for the despotic thrones of Europe! France would then be a nation formidable even in her adversity: she would have laid aside

her arms; she would no longer fight; but in proportion as she acquired strength, she would feel herself worthy of another glory, and she would be as eager to deliver the world as she formerly was to conquer it.

CHAPTER XXXI.

OF WAR ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF NATURE.

"Qu'est ce que la guerre ? un métier de barbares, où tout l'art consiste à être le plus fort sur un point donné."

NAPOLEON, the eve of the battle of Moskow. "Et lorsque la civilisation sera arrivée à amener dans toute l'Europe l'abandon des vieux usages de la barbarie, la guerre ne sera plus possible, car il n'y aura plus de forces matérielles qui puissent lutter contre les forces morales." ODILLON BARROT.

"Ne redoutez pas, Messieurs, de suivre ce véritable progrès de l'esprit humain, qui confiera, non pas à des armées commandées par des capitaines plus ou moins habiles, non pas à la force brutale, mais aux nobles combats de l'esprit, aux luttes de l'intelligence, la destinée et la direction des sociétés."

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BERRYER, Discours à la Chambre des Deputés. "Il y'a deux droits que les siècles ont tour à tour vu prévaloir sur la terre: le droit de force et de conquête, droit féroce et barbare, que je n'invoquerai jamais, droit brutal contre lequel toute civilisation a été fondée et se développe : il y en a un autre non moins dominateur, non moins infaillible, mais plus moral et plus divin: c'est celui que le monde reconnoîtroit à son insu, c'est celui qui vous fera triompher sans combat et sans obstacle, c'est le droit de civilisation."

LAMARTINE, Discours à la Chambre.

THE most violent advocate of sacerdotal despotism, a man who in his disdain for humanity has not feared to descend to be the apologist of the inquisition and of the executioner, M. de Maistre, has said, "History proves that