34 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



Tlie greatest philosopher of Germcany, great in heart 

 as well as in genius, Leibnitz, saw in the AVill a supreme 

 affirmation of the iiiiDwrtaliff/ of the soul The Will, in 

 fact, is not a contract, or, to use the barbarous expres- 

 sion of some writers, a '' quasi-contract" between one 

 living man and others. It is the Will of the dead. 

 " A testament,'' says St. Paul, and all legislation agrees 

 with him, *' a testament is of force after men are dead ; 

 otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator 

 livetli.''* It is in the Will that the ancestor, if I may 

 so speak, rises in his grave, wiser and more potent in 

 death than in life, marks out to his posterity the course 

 that they must follow, and proclaims the law of the fu- 

 ture. It is in vain that men assert that all rights perish 

 with the present life. The testament is the will of the 

 dead imposing duties on the living. It is, I will not say 

 a 'moral relation, that is too weak a vrord, it is a juridi- 

 cal relation formed from the tv/o sides of the tomb, and 

 constituting one of the bonds of that universal society 

 which Leibnitz called the commonwealth of soids. It is 

 no chimera, thou sage of Germany, this commonwealth 

 of souls. It is a truth, and we are coming back to it. 



How then could Robespierre, that great foe of the 

 family and of the Will, put the question before the Con- 

 stituent Assembly, which refused to listen (the Conven- 

 tion did listen to it at a later day) — how could he put 

 the question : " Is a man to be allowed to dispose of 

 the land he cultivated, after he himself has gone to 

 dust ?" Xo, Iiobes])ierre, you were wrong, you gave the 

 lie to your own nobler instincts. Was it not yourself, 

 some years later, Avho, at the sight of the revolutionary 

 atheism that was swelling from that time and now over- 

 flows upon us, affrighted at the fruit of your loins, 



* Hebrews, ix. 17. 



