FASCINATION 159
should prefer to call it indefinable progress, for if the human race is increasing in knowledge it is not improving in itself. Another saying is that to enforce universal education would be to eradicate crime, as if education would necessarily make men better, as if Robespierre and Marat, the frightful disciples of Rousseau, had not received a superior education to Rousseau’s own. The abbe Cocur and Lacenaire were pupils at the same college. Mr de Praslin, and Dr Castaney and Dr Lapommeraye enjoyed all the benefits oi a modern education. Eliçabide studied at the seminary. Educated scoundrels are the most well-equipped and the most dreadful of all scoundrels and teaching has never stopped them from doing wrong, whereas simple illiterates find no difficulty in practising the finest virtues. Education develops a man’s faculties and gives him the means of following his inclinations, but it does not change him. If you teach mathematics and astronomy to a dolt you might transform him into a Leverrier but you will never make a Galileo of him.
The human race as we know it is composed of one or two men and a large number of composite creatures with a little of the man in them and a great deal of the orang-utan or gorilla. Maybe some can claim a resemblance to the smaller and prettier apes:
these are the gigolos who are the slaves and playthings of some loose woman. I wonder whether there is any paradise prepared for these animals, or any hell for that matter.
When these brute beasts are at the point of death, their human side, such as it is, sometimes awakens and torments them; they call for a priest, the priest comes and why not?
Charity would not extinguish these glimmers of humanity, but what can one say to them? They will understand no appeals to reason, so they must be fascinated by signs, by unctions, by benedictions and by absolutions in extremis. They are shown an embroidered stole and a silver-gilt ciborium. They say what they are told to say, allow everything to be done to them which may be required and die peacefully with the blessing of the Church. Is it not written in the Gospel that God will save both men and animals — 1-lomines et jumenta salvabis, Domine.
Nature’s creations arc successively progressive as to species and races, but both races and species rise and fall like empires and individuals. All nations which have had their shining eras gradually fade away. and as it is with nations so it will be with
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