Misers have no belief in a future life; the present is their all in all.  This thought casts a terrible light upon our present epoch, in which, far more than at any former period, money sways the laws and politics and morals.  Institutions, books, men, and dogmas, all conspire to undermine belief in a future life,—­a belief upon which the social edifice has rested for eighteen hundred years.  The grave, as a means of transition, is little feared in our day.  The future, which once opened to us beyond the requiems, has now been imported into the present.  To obtain per fas et nefasa terrestrial paradise of luxury and earthly enjoyment, to harden the heart and macerate the body for the sake of fleeting possessions, as the martyrs once suffered all things to reach eternal joys, this is now the universal thought—­a thought written everywhere, even in the very laws which ask of the legislator, “What do you pay?” instead of asking him, “What do you think?” When this doctrine has passed down from the bourgeoisie to the populace, where will this country be?