Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1905-01-06

gotten world Oh strength ana beauty.
They who have sufficient energy to
detach themselves from the dreadful
inutilities with which our existence
is embarrassed can conquer it. They
will soon perceive that. in renouncing
a few superficial satisfactons, a few
puerile ambitions, they will add to
their faculty of being happy and their
power for Justice
These results bear as much on pri-
BILE that, in struggling against the
feverish tendency to shine, in ceasing
to make the satisfaction of our de-
sires the aim of our activity, in re-
turning to modest tastes and the true
life, we will be working to consolidate
our family. And another spirit will
breathe in our houses, creating new
manners and surroundings. more fav-
orabe to the education of childhood.
Little by little our young men and our
young girls will feel themselves di-
rected towards an ideal more elevated
and at the same time more realizable.
This interior transformation will cx-
ercise it's influence on public spirit at
wall depends on the grain and consist
ency of the mortar which cements it,
the same energy of public life depends
on the individual value and their pow
ers of cohesion. The great desidera-
tum Of our epoch is the culture of the
social element which is the human in
dividual Everything in the actual or
ganization of society brings us back
to that element In neglecting it we
are in danger of losing the benefit of
progress itself and to cause even the
most persevering efforts to turn
against us. If in ceaselessly working
ing over a tool the workman dimin-
ishes it's value what good will be the
engines of which he disposes? To
make worse by their very qualities
the faults of him who uses them
without discernment or conscience.
The wheels of the great modern ma
chine are infinitely delicate. Male
violence, lack of skill, or corruption
can all produce troubles otherwise re-
doubtable than in the more or less
rudimentary organism of the society
of other days. We must therefore
watch over the quality of the indi-
vidual, called in whatever measure to
tribute to the working of that ma
chine, so that he may be at once solid
and loyal, and taking his inspiration
from the central law of life be him
self and be brotherly All in and out
side of us simplifies and unifies itself
under the influence of that law, which
is the same for all and to which eacn
one should lead his actions, for our
essential interests are not contrary
they are identical. In cultivating the
spirit of simplicity we come, then, to
give to public life greater and strong.
er cohesion.
The phenomena of accommodation
and breaking down which we notice
bring themselves back to the same
cause-lack of solidity and lack of
cohesion. One can never say often
enough how much the small interests
of caste, of circles, of steeples, the bit
ter search for personal comfort are
contrary to the social good, and in
consequence fatal, destroying the hap
piness of the individual society
In which every one is concerned sO.e!y
for his own comfort is organized dis.
order. No other lesson comes from
these irreducible conflicts OF our tren.
chant egotisms.
We resemble too closely those peo-
pie who never claim family ties ex-
cept to ask some advantage or other,
and not to DO them honor On all the
rungs of the social ladder we make
new demands. We pretend to be all
creditors; no one owns to being d
debtor. Our dealings with our co-citi-
zens consist in inviting them in an
amiable or arrogant tone to pay US
what they owe. We reach nothing
good with that spirit. For at bottom
it Is the spirit of privilege, that eter-
nal enemy of the common law, that
obstacle ceaselessly being born anew,
enemy of brotherly feeling.
In a lecture which he gave In 1882,
M. Renan said that a nation was a
c n ri 70 flxv Nd h nd hot