For eighteen years, new sects, or, rather, posthumous sects, have
disputed for the soul of the People, under the names of Fourierism, of
Pantheism, of Communism, of Industrialism, of Economism, and, finally,
of Terrorism. Look at them, listen to them, read them, analyze them,
sift them, handle them; and say, if, with the exception of a vague
deifying of every thing,--that is to say, of nothing, by the
Fourierites,--there is a single one of these philosophical, social, or
political sects, which is not founded on the most evident practical
Atheism; which has not matter for a God; material enjoyments for
morality; exclusive satisfaction of the senses for an end; purely
sensual gratifications for a paradise; this world for the sole scene
of existence; the body for the only condition of being; the
prolonging of life a few more years for its only hope; a sharpening of
the senses to material appetites for a perspective; death for the end
of all things; after death, an assimilation with the dust of the earth
for a future; annihilation for justice, for reward, and for
immortality!
No, there has not been since 1830, there has not been since the
Revolution, there is not at this moment, one of these schools of
pretended apostles, prophets of the future, and saviors of the
present, which is not Materialism in action. It is the deadly seed of
the century of Helvetius, producing its poisons in the dregs of
another century. It is man, deprived of his spiritual and immortal
sense, reduced to a solid measure of organized matter, and seeking,
not virtue, that key to his future destiny, in his soul; but, in his
senses, mere enjoyment, that end of the brute, who only believes in
what he can eat and drink.