IO1 



of a point reached which appears to have 

 exhausted every other ideal, every other 

 aspiration. 



Just the same as the savage adores the fruit 

 tree, from which he receives benefits, for itself 

 and not for the fruits which it can give, and 

 finishes by making a fetich of it, an idol not 

 to be touched, and therefore sterile ; just as 

 the miser who has learnt in our individualist 

 world the value of money, finishes by worship- 

 ping money in itself and for itself like a fetich 

 or an idol, and keeps it hidden in a strong box 

 where it is sterile, instead of using it as a 

 means of procuring for himself fresh pleasures; 

 in the same way the sincere liberal, the son of 

 the French Revolution, has made of liberty 

 an idol which has its end in itself, a sterile 

 fetich, instead of using it as a means for new 

 conquests and to realise new ideals. 



We can understand that under a regime of 

 political tyranny the first and most urgent 

 ideal may have been the acquisition of liberty 

 and political sovereignty, and we, the last 

 comers, know how to be grateful for this 

 acquisition to the martyrs and heroes who 

 have insisted upon it at the price of their lives. 



But liberty is not, and cannot be, an end in 

 itself. 



Who wants the liberty of public meeting or 

 the liberty of thought if his stomach has not 

 its daily bread, and if millions of individuals 

 have their moral force paralysed in conse- 

 quence of bodily and cerebral anaemia ? 



What is the worth of a platonic participa- 

 tion in political government, the right to vote, 



