Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/255

 CLEMENCEAU I can not, therefore, admit that you give us choice only between these two hypotheses, and that you have said the last word when you say to us: "Take care; if you do not accept my project the human mind is bankrupt." M. Jaurès, you must not confound the bankruptcy of the human mind with the bankruptcy of the mind of Monsieur Jaurès!

You are carrying it, permit me to say, a little too high with the men who until this day have been your collaborators. You show us the spectacle of those divinities of Hellenism who, upon the Acropolis of Athens, struggled one day for the accomplishment of a prodigious task: with your imperious scepter you strike the earth, you cause to emerge from it the type of the new society—these are your words—and you, turning toward us, say to us: "Do as much." Very good; it is not certain that this challenge can not be taken up. The alchemists sought the philosopher's stone: you have found it; you hold in your hand the magic formula which ought to solve everything—I do not say which will solve, since we do not yet know that it will—which ought to solve in six months the social question.

That is all very good, but the clear, critical spirit of modern France, which you do not appreciate because it inconveniences you at the present moment, has preserved us up to this time from these dreams. It is, however, natural that at the historical hour when the social question presents itself in all its amplitude that 219