And he
would have pointed to Chantebled, his work, and to all the corn growing
up under the sun, even as his children grew. They could not be charged
with having come to consume the share of others, since each was born with
his bread before him. And millions of new beings might follow, for the
earth was vast: more than two-thirds of it still remained to be placed
under cultivation, and therein lay endless fertility for unlimited
humanity. Besides, had not every civilization, every progress, been due
to the impulse of numbers? The improvidence of the poor had alone urged
revolutionary multitudes to the conquest of truth, justice, and
happiness. And with each succeeding day the human torrent would require
more kindliness, more equity, the logical division of wealth by just laws
regulating universal labor. If it were true, too, that civilization was a
check to excessive natality, this phenomenon itself might make one hope
in final equilibrium in the far-off ages, when the earth should be
entirely populated and wise enough to live in a sort of divine
immobility. But all this was pure speculation beside the needs of the
hour, the nations which must be built up afresh and incessantly enlarged,
pending the eventual definitive federation of mankind.
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