112 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



lilîc facts,, — the orgaDization of property, and the organ- 

 ization of labor. Property existed before; the family 

 owned its tent and all it contained. Labor also existed 

 before; the shepherds tended their flocks. But neither 

 labor nor property were organized. From the hour this 

 organization begins, it takes cognizance of interests, and 

 so of rights. For it is the peculiar glory of man, that 

 for him, underneath every interest, there lies a right. 

 From this coming together of all interests and all rights, 

 there grows up the necessity, more and more keenly felt, 

 of a common arbiter, a central sovereign power, in a 

 word, of civil society. 



3. Agriculture the bread-producing power. 



Modern science analyzes bread, and shows us marvel- 

 lous things; but it has not seen nor told the half.* 

 But it has shown us how the corn, that foster-father 

 of nations, goes seeking through the soil, by potent and 

 infallible instinct, the imperceptible traces of the ele- 

 ments necessary for our bodies, — the phosphorus, for 

 example, essential to our bones; and then concentrates 

 it into the rich and generous grain, — grain, the earth's 

 milk for man, as milk is the mother's bread for her 

 child — the royal aliment of the civilized nations! I 

 am well aware that it is not such universally, l)ut it is 

 among the causes which have contributed to place us 

 of Occidental Christendom in the highest grade of 

 civilization. 



Bread, the food of the body, is in one sense the food 

 of the soul. Boast yourselves as you may, ye men of 

 thought ; for all that, your intellect would go out into 

 nothingness but for the blood flowing to the brain, like 

 oil in the lamp, actually keeping ali^e tluut flam'"» of 



* See the remarkable '• Rapport strr les commerces dn blc, de la favliie et du 

 pain,'" by M. Le Play. Quarto ; Paris, L'GO. 



