Competitive System Amongst Lower Animals 763 



will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the per- 

 nicious Napoleon. As long as our civilization is essentially 

 one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked 

 by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bit- 

 terness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. 

 Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, 

 and which serves all men." 



The above "leaders of men" all constructed great and far- 

 reaching proenvironal plans that were wholly for self glori- 

 fication, or for the forced dominance of the nation they rep- 

 resented, rather than for the benefit or improvement of the 

 human race. So their plans were essentially analytic, degrad- 

 ing, and makeshift. No one recognized this better than Napo- 

 leon, who, looking on his meteoric career, and recognizing that 

 the code of Napoleon was his only great proenvironal effort 

 toward human constructive improvement, exclaimed: "I shall 

 go down to posterity with my code in my hand." 



France, at the beginning of the last century, was a great 

 (shall we say the greatest.'^) European nation, whose generous 

 alert people had tlirown off the yoke of aristocratic despotism 

 that had become effete. They had reasserted true freedom 

 for man, like the valiant little republic Switzerland, and the 

 younger republic over the waves. A great chance came for 

 a wise and loving constructor to lead the country to highest 

 heights of achievement in human development. 



As to the result Emerson has again forcefully expressed 

 it, "Never was a leader so endowed, and so weaponed; never 

 leader found such aids and followers. And what was the 

 result of this vast talent and power, of these immense armies, 

 burned cities, squandered treasures, inmiolated millions of 

 men, of this demoralized Europe.^ It came to no result. All 

 passed away like the smoke of his artillery and left no trace. 

 He left France smaller, poorer, feebler than he found it; and 

 the whole contest for freedom was to be begun again. The 

 attempt was, in principle, suicidal. France served him with 

 life, and limb and estate, as long as it could identify its in- 

 terests with him; but when men saw that after victory was 



