22 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



part/'' remarked an eminent traveller to me, on his 

 return from tliese distant lands, " what I saw over there 

 was a great deal of Abraham !'' And in fact, excepting 

 the purity of the primitive religion, which has decayed 

 among them, it is a marvellous relic of tliat patriarchal 

 society the simplicity of which is so superior, in grandeur 

 and beauty, to the complicated and scientilic organiza- 

 tion of our civil society. These are the nomadic shep- 

 herds among whom intercourse with nature has developed 

 a remarkable practical sense and meditative intelligence ; 

 these are tlie communities sustained only by tradition 

 and the domestic virtues, among which each father of a 

 family commands in authority and in liberty .... Hail, 

 sacred deserts, plains of Tartary, that have poured out 

 again and again your healing floods eastward toward 

 China — westward toward Greece and Eussia ; perad ven- 

 ture for us also ye are guardifig the secret of the future ! 

 Ah! if we contiuuc to slip aloug tliis fatal slope, if we 

 go on in the progress of decay to atheism in doctrine, to 

 materialism in morals, to revolt against all authority 

 worthy of the name, to servitude under every revolution- 

 ary despotism ; if our posterity follows us into these 

 lower depths — tlien, ye plains of Tartary, send forth 

 to us our latest saviors ! Trample us beneath the hoofs 

 of your steeds; smite us down Avitli the weapons of your 

 warriors, and then, baptized with the lingering remains 

 of our Christianity, rise up like tlie Germans and the 

 Iluns of yore, and you will have snatched Europe froTii 

 the corruption in which it has been dragged })y sophists 

 and hai-l(jt3, Ijy demagogues and tyrants ! 



[After liaviiig estaljlislicd 1)}^ the Bible, by history, and by coii- 

 t(;inpcjrary gcograpliy, the priority of domestic society to civil 

 society, Father Hyacinthe proved that on the contrary it is the 

 Slate which has its origin and the groiiii'l of its existence in the 



