If you wish that this revolution should not have the same end, beware of abject Materialism, degrading Sensualism, gross Socialism, of besotted Communism; of all these doctrines of flesh and blood, of meat and drink, of hunger and thirst, of wages and traffic, which these corruptors of the soul of the People preach to you, exclusively, as the sole thought, the sole hope, as the only duty, and only end of man! Are you willing to have inscribed on the tomb of our French race, as on that of the Sybarites, this epitaph: “This People ate and drank well, while they browsed upon the earth?” No! You desire that History should write thus: “This People worshipped well, served God and humanity well,—in thought, in philosophy, in religion, in literature, in arts, in arms, in labor, in liberty, in their Aristocracies, in their Democracies, in their Monarchies, and their Republics! This nation was the spiritual laborer, the conqueror of truth; the disciple of the highest God, in all the ways of civilization,—and, to approach nearer to him, it invented the Republic, that government of duties and of rights, that rule of spiritualism, which finds in ideas its only sovereignty.” LAMARTINE, Representative of the People. THE END. Transcriber's Note: This text uses some variant spelling—for example, partizan, demagoguical, apostacy, corruptors. This has been preserved as printed. The ellipsis in this text uses asterisks rather than dots. On page 62, the semicolon following 'rose' has been moved to follow 'suffered'—"... fought, spoke, suffered; rose and fell ..." A repetition of the book title has been deleted. |