metaphysical period; but now there exists positive, critical
science, which does not deceive, since it is all founded on
induction and experiment. Now our erections are not shaky, as they
formerly were, and only in our path lies the solution of all the
problems of humanity."

But the old teachers said precisely the same, and they were no
fools; and we know that there were people of great intelligence
among them. And precisely thus, within my memory, and with no less
confidence, with no less recognition on the part of the crowd of so-
called cultivated people, spoke the Hegelians. And neither were our
Herzens, our Stankevitches, or our Byelinskys fools. But whence
arose that marvellous manifestation, that sensible people should
preach with the greatest assurance, and that the crowd should accept
with devotion, such unfounded and unsupportable teachings? There is
but one reason,--that the teachings thus inculcated justified people
in their evil life.

A very poor English writer, whose works are all forgotten, and
recognized as the most insignificant of the insignificant, writes a
treatise on population, in which he devises a fictitious law
concerning the increase of population disproportionate to the means
of subsistence. This fictitious law, this writer encompasses with
mathematical formulae founded on nothing whatever; and then he
launches it on the world. From the frivolity and the stupidity of
this hypothesis, one would suppose that it would not attract the
attention of any one, and that it would sink into oblivion, like all
the works of the same author which followed it; but it turned out
quite otherwise. The hack-writer who penned this treatise instantly
becomes a scientific authority, and maintains himself upon that