I
It seems that gradually all is tending with one accord to prove that the
last truths are at the extreme points of thoughts which man has hitherto
refused to explore. This may be stated with regard to both moral and
positive science; nor is there any reason against adding to these the
science of politics, which is only a prolongation of moral science.
For centuries, mankind has, in a measure, lived in a half-way house. A
thousand prejudices and, above all, the enormous prejudices of religion
hid from it the summits of its reason and of its feelings. Now that the
greater number of the artificial mountains that rose between its eyes
and the real horizon of its mind have, in a marked manner, subsided, it
takes stock at once of itself, of its position in the midst of the
worlds and of the aim which it wishes to attain. It is beginning to
understand that all that does not go as far as the logical conclusions
of its intelligence is but a useless game by the way-side. It says to
itself that it will have to cover to-morrow the road which it did not
travel to-day and that, in the meantime, by thus wasting its time
between every stage, it has nothing to gain but a little delusive peace.
It is written in our nature that we are extreme beings; that is our
force and the cause of our progress. We necessarily and instinctively
fly to the utmost limits of our being. We do not feel ourselves to live
and we are unable to organize a life that shall satisfy us, except upon
the confines of our possibilities. Thanks to that self-enlightening
instinct, there is a more and more unanimous tendency to stop no longer
at intermediate solutions, to avoid henceforth all half-way experiments
or at least to hurry through them as rapidly as possible.