The left hand of Progress is called Force; the right hand is called Mind.
There is at this hour a great deal of useful destruction accomplished; all the old cumbersome civilization is, thanks to our fathers, cleared away. It is well, it is finished, it is thrown down, it is on the ground. Now, up with you all, intellects! to work, to labour, to fatigue, to duty; it is necessary to construct.
Here three questions: To construct what? To construct where? To construct how?
We reply: To construct the people. To construct the people according to the laws of progress. To construct the people according to the laws of light.
CHAPTER II.
To work for the people,—that is the great and urgent necessity.
The human mind—an important thing to say at this minute—has a greater need of the ideal even than of the real.
It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live. Now, do you wish to realize the difference? Animals exist, man lives.
To live, is to understand. To live, is to smile at the present, to look toward posterity over the wall. To live, is to have in one's self a balance, and to weigh in it the good and the evil. To live, is to have justice, truth, reason, devotion, probity, sincerity, common-sense, right, and duty nailed to the heart. To live, is to know what one is worth, what one can do and should do. Life is conscience. Cato would not rise before Ptolemy. Cato lived.