While he was thinking it all over, a phrase which he had somewhere heard—­formed perhaps from the residuum of old readings—­began to chant in his brain:  “A life without ideals is not worth the trouble of living.”

Ferragut mutely assented.  It was true:  in order to live, an ideal is necessary.  But where could he find it?...

Suddenly, in his mind’s eye, he saw Toni,—­just as when he used to try to express his confused thoughts.  With all his credulity and simplicity, his captain now considered his humble mate his superior.  In his own way Toni had his ideal:  he was concerned with something besides his own selfishness.  He wished for other men what he considered good for himself, and he defended his convictions with the mystical enthusiasm of all those historic personages who have tried to impose a belief;—­with the faith of the warriors of the Cross and those of the Prophet, with the tenacity of the Inquisition and of the Jacobins.

He, a man of reason, had only known how to ridicule the generous and disinterested enthusiasms of other men, detecting at once their weak points and lack of adaptation to the reality of the moment....  What right had he to laugh at his mate who was a believer, dreaming, with the pure-mindedness of a child, of a free and happy humanity?...  Aside from his stupid jeers, what could he oppose to that faith?...

Life began to appear to him under a new light, as something serious and mysterious that was exacting a bridge toll, a tribute of courage from all the beings who pass over it, leaving the cradle behind them and having the grave as a final resting-place.

It did not matter at all that their ideals might appear false.  Where is the truth, the only and genuine truth?...  Who is there that can demonstrate that he exists, and is not an illusion?...

The necessary thing was to believe in something, to have hope.  The multitudes had never been touched by impulses of argument and criticism.  They had only gone forward when some one had caused hopes and hallucinations to be born in their souls.  Philosophers might vainly seek the truth by the light of logic, but the rest of mankind would always prefer the chimerical ideals that become transformed into powerful motives of action.

All religions were becoming beautifully less upon being subjected to cold examination.  Yet, nevertheless, they were producing saints and martyrs, true super-men of morality.  All revolutions had proved imperfect and ineffectual when submitted to scientific revision.  Yet, nothwithstanding, they had brought forth the greatest individual heroes, the most astonishing collective movements of history.

“To believe!...  To dream!” a mysterious voice kept chanting in his brain.  “To have an ideal!...”

He did not fancy living, like the mummies of the great Pharaohs, in a luxurious tomb, anointed with perfume and surrounded with everything necessary for nourishment and sleep.  To be born, to grow up, to reproduce oneself was not enough to form a history:—­all the animals do the same.  Man ought to add something more which he alone possesses,—­the faculty of framing a future....  To dream!  To the heritage of idealism left by our forebears should be added a new ideal, or the power of bringing it about.