[121] None in France.
[122] See the author’s Problèmes d’esthétique, i. 3.
[123] See the author’s Esquisse d’une morale, pp. 236, 237.
[124] M. de Molinari has calculated the chances of death to which the profession of assassin is exposed, as compared with certain dangerous occupations, as that of miner. He reaches the following result: that an assassin runs less risk of death than a miner; an insurance company might demand a smaller premium of assassins than it would be obliged to demand of miners. (See Esquisse d’une morale, the chapter on Le risque et la lutte, i. 4.)
[125] Slaves, exiles, and unfortunates generally drink. The Irish and Poles are, according to statistics, the most drunken peoples in Europe.
[126] “Prophecy is not dead, it flourishes under another name. Religious reforms, emancipation from oppressive authority, war against corrupt institutions, religious poetry, philosophy of history—are all represented under various titles in the modern world. The old trunk has branched again simply.” (M. Albert Réville, p. 229, Prolégomènes de l’Histoire des religions.)
[127] Music at the present day forms a part of the cult; but either it is supplied by members of the faithful, in which event it is sufficiently bad, for the majority of the faithful are ignorant of music; or it is provided by mercenaries, and it is then more commonly good, but is generally ill chosen. Musical education will one day probably be much more wide-spread than it is to-day; it would not be more difficult, and would always be more useful, to teach children the elements of music than to teach them the mystery of the Incarnation. More than that, if religious music were chosen not only from so-called sacred works but from the works of classical masters generally, one might be certain of hearing good music, varied in style and movement, and capable of pleasing all those in whom the æsthetic sense is developed.
[128] Every library reading room ought to open on a garden where one could read and write on fine days in the open air. For all men whose labour is physical—for example, for a factory hand—the proper recreation is repose in the open air, and, if need be, intellectual labour in the open air. For men who work with their minds, the proper recreation is bodily exercise in the open air, in the sunlight. For children every holiday ought to be spent in the country. Lighted rooms, children’s entertainments in the house even on Sunday afternoons, theatrical representations, are, hygienically speaking, absurdities. All boarding-schools, moreover, ought to be beyond the city limits and if possible on some commanding height. If there existed in France, as in Germany for example, great colleges in country districts hard by forests, or still better, in the highlands of Dauphiny or the Pyrenees, such places would ultimately be adopted by the better classes for their children’s education, and thus might be combated the degeneracy of the middle class, which is so much more rapid in France than elsewhere, because the custom of restricting the number of children interferes with natural selection.
[129] See upon this point the author’s Problèmes d’esthétique, p. 139 (De l’antagonisme entre l’esprit scientifique et l’instinct.)
[130] Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation, p. 215.