They can
naturally have but scattering views on such subjects, and in default
of personal judgment, they drift with the current, reacting with
extreme quickness to any shock, for they are ultra-sensitive, with a
morbid vanity which exaggerates the thoughts of others when it cannot
express their own. This is the only originality at their disposal, and
God knows they make the most of it!
What remains? the Clergy? It is they who handle the heaviest
explosives; the ideas of Justice, Truth, Right, and God; and they make
this artillery fight for their passions. Their absurd pride, of which
they are quite unconscious, causes them to lay claim to the property
of God, and to the exclusive right to dispose of it wholesale and
retail.
It is not so much that they lack sincerity, virtue, or kindness, but
they do lack humility; they have none, however much they may profess
it. Their practice consists in adoring their navel as they see it
reflected in the Talmud, or the Old and New Testaments. They are
monsters of pride, not so very far removed from the fool of legend
who thought himself God the Father. Is it so much less dangerous to
believe oneself His manager, or His secretary?
Clerambault was struck by the morbid character of the intellectual
species. In the _bourgeois_ caste the power of organisation and
expression of ideas has reached almost monstrous proportions.
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