spite of the sneers of incredulity.

I know well that the views of the Academy are not thus profound,
and that it equals a council of the Church in its horror of
novelties; but the more it turns towards the past, the more it
reflects the future, and the more, consequently, must we believe
in its inspiration: for the true prophets are those who do not
understand their utterances. Listen further.

"What," the Academy has asked, "are the most useful applications
of the principle of voluntary and private association that we can
make for the alleviation of misery?"

And again:--

"To expound the theory and principles of the contract of
insurance, to give its history, and to deduce from its rationale
and the facts the developments of which this contract is capable,
and the various useful applications possible in the present state
of commercial and industrial progress."

Publicists admit that insurance, a rudimentary form of commercial
solidarity, is an association in things, societas in re; that is,
a society whose conditions, founded on purely economical
relations, escape man's arbitrary dictation. So that a
philosophy of insurance or mutual guarantee of security, which
shall be deduced from the general theory of real (in re)
societies, will contain the formula of universal association, in
which no member of the Academy believes. And when, uniting
subject and object in the same point of view, the Academy