natural history demonstrates by solid proofs that the first man was carried in the bosom of a monkey; and I ask:  What is the circumstance which set apart in the animal species a branch which presented new phenomena?  What is the cause?  That monkey-author of our race which one day began to speak in the midst of his brother-monkeys, amongst whom thenceforward he had no fellow; that monkey, that stood erect in the sense of his dignity; that, looking up to heaven, said, My God! and that, retiring into himself, said:  I!—­that monkey which, while the female monkeys continued to give birth to their young, had sons by the partner of his life and pressed them to his heart; that monkey—­what shall we say of it?  What climate, what soil, what regimen, what food, what heat, what moisture, what drought, what light, what combination of phosphorus, what disengagement of electricity, separated from the animal races, not only man, but human society? humanity with its combats, its falls, its risings again, its sorrows and its joys, its tears and its smiles; humanity with its arts, its sciences, its religion, its history in short, its history and its hopes of immortality?  That monkey, what shall we say of it?  Do you not see that the breath of the Spirit passed over it, and that God said unto it:  Behold, thou art made in mine image:  remember now thy Father who is in heaven?  Do you not see that though we grant everything to the extreme pretensions of naturalists, the question comes up again whole and entire?  When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature, that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance.  Mark then where lies the real problem.  Whether the eternal God formed the body of the first man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the dust of the earth, by making it pass through the long series of animality—­the question is a grave one, but it is of secondary importance.  The first question is to know whether we are merely the ephemeral product of the encounter of atoms, or whether there is in us an essence, a nature, a soul, a reality in short, with which may connect itself another future than the dissolution of the sepulchre; whether there remains another hope than annihilation as the term of our latest sorrows, or, for the aspirants after fame, only that evanescent memory which time bears away with everything beside.

This is the question.  Do not allow it to be put out of sight beneath details of physiology and researches of natural history, which can neither settle, nor so much as touch the problem.  If therefore you fall in with any one of these philosophers of matter, bid him take this for all your answer:  “There is one fact which stands out against your theory and suffices to overthrow it:  that fact is—­myself!” And since, to have the better of materialism, it is sufficient to understand well what is one thought of the mind, one throb of the spiritual heart, one utterance of the conscience,—­add boldly with Corneille’s Medea: