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160 THE GREAT SECRET
humanity as a whole. When men who are half beasts disappear in the next cataclysm, we do not doubt that a new race of wise and powerful beings will appear who will bear the same proportion to our species as we bear to the monkeys.
It is oniy then that souls will be truly immortal, for they will become worthy and capable of retaining their memory.
Meanwhile it is certain that, far from evolving, the human race is actually degenerating. A fearful phenomenon is occurring in our souls. Men no longer have any feeling for the divine and those women who are not machines of vanity and luxury only turn to faith out oi liking for the absurd, as a refuge from reason, which bores them. Poetry is dead in our hearts. Our young people read Victor Hugo, but all they admire in this poet is the fine writing and his quotable thoughts; dccp down they prefer Proudhon, find too much sensibility in Renan and treat Mr Tame and Dr Grenier and Dr Buchner as serious writers. The theatre goes out of its way to poke fun at all the generous sentiments of former times; not with the loud peal of laughter of Rabelais when he was castigating human stupidity, but with the sneer of a broad joke which offers an insult to all the virtues.
As with honour so with love, it is an old saint who has no more praise. Even the names of the grandest and most beautiful sentiments are almost out of place in polite conversation and it may soon be considered improper to repeat them. What arc the dreams of the really nice young ladies who lead the most sheltered lives, those for example who attend the Oiseaux or Sacr-Cocur convent schools? Arc they longing for the tenderness of mutual affection? Not a bit of it, that would be a matter fit for the confessional and none of them would dare admit such a thing to her friends. They think about the splendours of a rich marriage and dream of a carriage and a castle. If they can get a husband with a distinguished name and good appearance, they will not mind having to take him as part of the deal.
I am not a misanthropist and I am not trying to satirize my century, I am recording a moral weakness in the human species in order to show that Magism is more than ever timely and that when one is dealing with such poor material it is necessary to fascinate if one is going to succeed.
There are precepts in the Gospels the sublimity of which was
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