“To my son: 

“Life wearies me, my son, and I shall relinquish it.  The true superiority of man over the inert or passive creatures that surround him, lies in his power to free himself, at will, from those, pernicious servitudes which are termed the laws of nature.  Man, if he will it, need not grow old:  the lion must.  Reflect, my son, upon this text, for all human power lies in it.

“Science asserts and demonstrates it.  Man, intelligent and free, is an animal wholly unpremeditated upon this planet.  Produced by unexpected combinations and haphazard transformations, in the midst of a general subordination of matter, he figures as a dissonance and a revolt!

“Nature has engendered without having conceived him.  The result is as if a turkey-hen had unconsciously hatched the egg of an eagle.  Terrified at the monster, she has sought to control it, and has overloaded it with instincts, commonly called duties, and police regulations known as religion.  Each one of these shackles broken, each one of these servitudes overthrown, marks a step toward the thorough emancipation of humanity.

“I must say to you, however, that I die in the faith of my century, believing in matter uncreated, all-powerful, and eternal—­the Nature of the ancients.  There have been in all ages philosophers who have had conceptions of the truth.  But ripe to-day, it has become the common property of all who are strong enough to stand it—­for, in sooth, this latest religion of humanity is food fit only for the strong.  It carries sadness with it, for it isolates man; but it also involves grandeur, making man absolutely free, or, as it were, a very god.  It leaves him no actual duties except to himself, and it opens a superb field to one of brain and courage.

“The masses still remain, and must ever remain, submissive under the yoke of old, dead religions, and under the tyranny of instincts.  There will still be seen very much the same condition of things as at present in Paris; a society the brain of which is atheistic, and the heart religious.  And at bottom there will be no more belief in Christ than in Jupiter; nevertheless, churches will continue to be built mechanically.  There are no longer even Deists; for the old chimera of a personal, moral God-witness, sanction, and judge,—­is virtually extinct; and yet hardly a word is said, or a line written, or a gesture made, in public or private life, which does not ever affirm that chimera.  This may have its uses perchance, but it is nevertheless despicable.  Slip forth from the common herd, my son, think for yourself, and write your own catechism upon a virgin page.

“As for myself, my life has been a failure, because I was born many years too soon.  As yet the earth and the heavens were heaped up and cumbered with ruins, and people did not see.  Science, moreover, was relatively still in its