PASSIONAL ANALOGY I THE PIVOTAL SCIENCE. 295 
has the name of passional analogy; it is not a science, it is the 
SCIENCE, that is to say, the pivotal science, embracing all others. 
It is the thread of Ariadne, that guides human intelligence across 
the most complex dilemmas of nature. It does not date from 
yesterday, for it is as old as metaphor, as human language. It 
is this that formerly gave to (Edipus the word of a too famous 
riddle, and that urged the Sphynx to suicide. 
The Greek people, which has owed its artistic and intellectual 
superiority only to its force in analogy, had foreseen the relations 
of the passions of man with the order of created things, when it 
inscribed on the front of the temple of Delphi the formula, 
tfsau^rov. 
Enow thyself ; that is to say, analyze thy body and thy soul, 
and thou wilt hold the key of all the mysteries of nature. 
The secret of the Universe is all entire in this formula of ancient 
wisdom. 
Modern science knows man ; it has analyzed him physically and 
morally ; it has dissected him in his intelligence and in his flesh ; 
it is armed with the means of weighing the firmament and of dis- 
cerning the soul of globes. 
Man is the king of the planet Earth, and the co-operatt)r with 
God, with whom he is identical in substance. If man was not 
identical in substance with God he could not understand Him, and 
his reason would not have the force to place him in relation with 
the eternal order, with the visible and the invisible worlds. 
Man creates like God ; his domain is called art, as contrasted 
with Nature, which is the domain of the planetary creation. Nature 
sketches, art polishes. Nature gives the marble, art makes stat- 
ues more beautiful than Nature, and in which it incarnates the 
ideal. God makes the wild stock, man grafts it, and by proce- 
dures of his own changes the rough wild pear into the fine-flavored 
seckel or beurre. The peach of Montreuil and the rose of paint- 
ers have no resemblance to their original types, and are much more 
beautiful than nature — are creations the whole honor of which re- 
turns to man. 
The wheat- plant is a human creation ; left to itself, it degen- 
erates into the tare. Let us not fear to restore to man what be- 
