member of it?" asked the Saint-Simonian.

"If you had an income of fifty thousand livres, you would not think
much about the people. If you are smitten with a tender passion for
the race, go to Madagascar; there you will find a nice little nation
all ready to Saint-Simonize, classify, and cork up in your phials, but
here every one fits into his niche like a peg in a hole. A porter is a
porter, and a blockhead is a fool, without a college of fathers to
promote them to those positions."

"You are a Carlist."

"And why not? Despotism pleases me; it implies a certain contempt for
the human race. I have no animosity against kings, they are so
amusing. Is it nothing to sit enthroned in a room, at a distance of
thirty million leagues from the sun?"

"Let us once more take a broad view of civilization," said the man of
learning who, for the benefit of the inattentive sculptor, had opened
a discussion on primitive society and autochthonous races. "The vigor
of a nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude;
then as aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition
of the primitive rule, more or less skilfully managed. For example, in
remote ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both
sword and censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff
and the king. To-day our society, the latest word of civilization, has
distributed power according to the number of combinations, and we come
to the forces called business, thought, money, and eloquence.
Authority thus divided is steadily approaching a social dissolution,
with interest as its one opposing barrier. We depend no longer on