Flaubert’s take

“However much you fatten human cattle, giving them straw as high as their bellies, and even gilding their stable, they will remain brutes, no matter what one says. All the advance that one can hope for, is to make the brute a little less wicked. But as for elevating the ideas of the mass, giving it a larger and therefore a less human conception of God, I have my doubts”

 There now something to brighten up your Sunday morning. Some of Flaubert’s and George Sand’s correspondence can be found ici:

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/snflb10.txt