phenomenon of life is produced in the sun, as on the earth, but under different forms and conditions;"* thus surpassing the profound conceptions of Huygens, who, while peopling the stars, had not dared to people the sun;t the younger Herschel raises himself a degree higher towards the sublime; he feels that intelligence is everywhere, because he recognizes everywhere a God. Hence, all the luminous points of the firmament are animated by prayer and by love; each planet, each star, each sun, each milky way is an altar which burns, and whence arises the hymn of praise; and the totality of these planets, of these stars and suns, is the temple of the divinity; and these sublime choruses which resound from world to world, form the worship of an endless creation, an eternal, incomprehensible worship heard by God alone, amidst the harmony of the spheres, throughout space, time, and eternity.

CHAPTER XXIII.

OF THE PERFECTIBILITY

OF THE HUMAN RACE-A

MORAL LAW OF NATURE.

"Oh la belle, la noble destinée d'avancer toujours vers la perfection, sans rencontrer jamais le terme de ses progrès."

ANCILLON. De la Destination de l'Homme.

WITHIN the depths of our soul there reposes a sentiment of which moralists have scarcely had a glimpse, and which, nevertheless, exercises great power over the human * Philosophical Transactions, 1828.

Nouveau Traité de la Pluralité des Mondes. Translated from the Latin, 1718.

race, viz. that man, whatever may be in other respects his ignorance or his enlightenment, will only recognise in reason and in justice, the right of ruling over him. It results from this, that nations obey the hardest laws, the most extravagant superstitions, only because they believe them to be just and reasonable. Under this sentiment, which is so simple, the greatest events in history come to arrange themselves.

This sentiment is sublime, for it testifies, (and this in opposition to the calumnies of sophists respecting our love for falsehood,) it evidences, I say, that we attach ourselves to error, only in as far as it is presented to us in the garb of truth. Carry your ideas back to the middle ages, see the people bowed down before the nobles, and the nobility kings and people bowed down before the priesthood. Wherefore this double abjection? It is because the superiority of noble races was a conviction of the people, as the holiness of the priests was a conviction of the nobles and of kings. But let one of these two powers, that which influences the people, for instance, understand its error, immediately its chains fall, and, stripping itself of a belief which retained it in slavery, it hastens to seek that justice in which alone it recognises the right of commanding. Certainly, I had great reason to call sublime, a sentiment which maintains the dignity of man even beneath the rod of despotism, and which renders him free upon the first glimmerings of truth.

In this universal sentiment we recognise a law of nature, a law against which all the superstitions and tyrannical legislations of the world come one by one to destroy themselves.

This law likewise connects itself in a surprising manner with two other laws, which concur to the same end. Thus, man loves truth, and aspires to it: the first law of nature.

But in the search after it he requires a guide, and this guide he carries within him.

Man inclines always to that which is most great and beautiful: the second law of nature.

Lastly, these two laws may be considered as the source of a third; viz. the law of perfectibility, which affects all people by the same impulse, though not with the same degree of movement, (some being more forward, others more backward,) towards the fulfilment of all the laws of nature.

This law was only discovered towards the end of the last century;-Condorcet, from his dungeon, hastened to cast it out to the world. The thought was great, but he merely had a glimpse of it, leaving to the following age the glory of making the providential application of it to the development of morality and humanity upon the earth.

What

Such is the object of the law; or, to speak plainer, such is the great work imposed upon the human race. will be the end of this work? I know not. All that it is possible for us to have a glimpse of, is, that there is a mission given, a road more or less long to be travelled over, and that the moral world, though revolving in darkness, is continually approaching nearer to the light.

Those who have combated this law have imagined that it proclaimed the progressive increase of human intellect. Full of this idea, they ask what poet can we compare to Homer, what philosopher to Socrates, what warrior to Epaminondas? they then rejoice at their triumph, even before having understood the question. In fact, perfectibility is not the power of changing the nature of man: it is simply the expression of the movement of the masses and of the progress of humanity. Considering all the people on the earth as a single man, it inquires whether this being be ameliorated since the beginning of the world: it asks him what he was at the time of Sesostris, and what he is

upon

at the present day; the errors which he has destroyed, and the truths which he has brought to light: all which he has left his path, and all which he has collected on it in the course of more than six thousand years. Magnificent spectacle of human destinies, the circle of which expands in proportion as each new century passes on to eternity.

It would be the history of a lofty conception, that of the progress of truth upon the earth. The greatest glories, the bloody glories, would occupy in it but the smallest space; all the people would be excluded from it who have left nothing to the world.

Egypt, notwithstanding its castes, its idolatry, its slavery, and the mutilation of men, might obtain in it some lines. This country was a vast workshop, where a multitude of hands worked for the profit of the master. But whilst darkness enveloped the people, a hidden light shone in the temples and in the tombs ;-Pythagoras and Plato went thither to seek wisdom, and with this light the sceptre of civilisation was transferred to Greece.

Athens and Sparta presented the spectacle of two free nations. It was the first trial of this truth, yet unknown, that all men being equal before the gods, ought to be equal before the laws. Greece bequeathed this principle to Rome, together with the doctrines of Socrates, the example of his death, and the idea of an only God, as the source of all truth.

Rome profited but little by the legacy. She prided herself upon the love of country, and upon her family virtues : the chastity of a woman, and a temple raised to filial piety, established her power, and made her great in the eyes of the gods and men. She held the earth in her chains; she exhibited to it the example of the most heroic devotedness; but upon her fall she left to it none of those great truths which are the patrimony of the human race.

And this is not one of those thoughtless accusations which history takes pleasure in contradicting.

Open Tacitus and Titus Livius, you perceive Rome powerful; Rome knows how to fight, to conquer, and to civilise; but she adds nothing to the legacy of Greece, she takes off nothing from the ferocity of her civilisation. Polytheism, idolatry, slavery, the glory of suicide, the bloody games of the circus, human sacrifices, the earth declared barbarian, the people considered as a prey, and the right of arms raised above moral right; such are the popular errors, the religious, patriotic and political cruelties, against which during more than twenty centuries no complaining voice was raised.

Antiquity was shrouded by these errors as by a veil, which concealed from its genius the greatness of God, the dignity of man, and the laws of nature.

The progress of ancient society was restricted to these three ideas,-unity in marriage, civil and political liberty, and equality before the law. These two latter principles were, however, circumscribed within the narrowest limits; they did not emanate from the nation, and they afforded no help to the conquered. It was not the man which the law honoured, it was the citizen.

This was the moral work of forty centuries. Then the great empire fell, and with it all the ancient fabric of society. Amidst these ruins the rights of the citizen were lost, but those of the man were again found. They served to lay the foundation for a more enlarged, a more fruitful, and especially a more human order of things; they were based upon the unity of God, from which arises the unity of the human race.

It is from Jesus Christ that we derive this light. He caused the veil to fall which concealed from the world the God of Moses transfigured by love; he restored the chil