"You are an enigma; I cannot make you out," said Hester.
"How did man fall into the degraded state in which the masses are?" said M. de Villeneuve. "We have proof of intelligence enough in the founders of Babylon, of Nineveh, of Thebes, and of Egypt."
"Some men must have known something, I think," said Hester, "but they seem to have kept their knowledge very carefully to themselves, and made slaves of those to whom they did not impart it. Knowledge was very much an affair of class or rank. The populace was brutish, if accounts are true, and kept in order by sheer force."
"And when that force pressed too hardly, they fled and became the founders of the savage life. Such is the probable course. And what power, think you, elevated the mass, even to the extent in which we see them now? for, debased as they may be, they are [{604}] far above the races that did the same work in ancient times; nay, the laborers of Europe are far above the slaves of Asia. What has caused the difference?"
"The march of intellect," said Hester proudly.
"Supposing that granted for the sake of the argument, what caused 'the march of intellect?' what gave the impetus to raise the 'toiler for bread' in the scale of humanity?"
Hester could not answer. The comte continued:
"I believe it to be that very influence which 'the age' is seeking so earnestly to destroy. Man's selfishness oppressed his fellows, overpowered his faculties, laid them to sleep so effectually that the rich and great were acknowledged by the crowd to be of another order, of another scale of being, to be judged of by another standard, to be weighed by another measure. The gospel came: to the poor it was preached par excellence; it was a call of the Father to his downtrodden children, an appeal to their hearts, their affections, a loving invitation to them to come, as children of the most High God, to claim their inheritance of lofty faculty, of high intuitions, of exalted aspiration. The understanding enlightened through the heart changed by slow degree's the face of nations; the slave disappeared from the christianized lands, the leaven worked from the interior to the exterior, life became protected, the rich and the poor, equal before God, became equal before the law also; civilization of heart produced civilization of manners among the masses. The greater involved the lesser. Men's intellects were awakened, roused to action, and then followed the old story over again; they forget how they had obtained these gifts, and from whom, and they are applying them to selfish purposes, to animal gratification. But liberty is the gift of the gospel, liberty emanating from emancipation of the understanding by means of the soul. If we would preserve the gift, we must observe the conditions."
"Do you really think 'liberty' a good?" asked Hester.
"True liberty is one of the greatest of blessings," said the comte; "but you will find it difficult to give 'true liberty' on earthly grounds alone, it would so easily degenerate into license. Now the repression of license by force is a restraint to which men unwillingly submit, and easily engenders tyranny, so that, unless license is restrained by the spiritual sense, liberty is in continual jeopardy; it is difficult to believe it can be lasting."