our universe. The laws of gravity, of statics and of dynamics, impose themselves by a reductio ad absurdum: everything must hold together or 1t will collapse.
A supreme determinism illuminates tor us the creations of nature and gives us the security of something poised and reasonably made, of something infinitely modulated, evolved, varied and unified.
The primordial physical laws are simple and few in number. The moral laws are simple and few in number.
***
The man of to-dav planes to perfection a board with a planing machine, in a few seconds. The man of yesterday planed a board reasonably well with a plane. Very primitive man squared a board very badly with a flint or a knife. Very primitive man employed a unit of measurement and regulating lines in order to make his task cashier. The Greek, the Egyptian, Michaclangelo or Blondel employed regulating lines in order to correct their work and for the satisfaction of their artist's sense and of their mathematical thought. The man of to-day employs nothing at all and the result is the boulevard Raspail. But he proclaims that he is a free poet and that his instincts suffice; but these can only express themselves by means of tricks learnt in the schools. A lyrical poet let loose with a halter round his neck, a man who knows things, but only things that he has neither discovered for himself nor even checked, a man who has lost, through all the teaching he has received, the ingenuous and vital energy of the child who never tires of asking "Why ?"
