--Ah! let us tear away the veil and know the
creature hidden inside of us. There is less danger when man shows
frankly as a brute than when he drapes himself in a false and sickly
idealism. He does not eliminate his animal instincts, he only deifies
and tries to explain them, but as this cannot be done without
excessive simplification--according to the law of the mind which
in order to grasp must let go an equal amount--he disguises and
intensifies them in one direction. Everything that departs from the
straight line or that interferes with the strict logic of his mental
edifice, he denies; worse he pulls it up by the roots, and commands
that it be destroyed in the name of sacred principles. It therefore
follows that he cuts down much of the infinite growth of nature, and
allows to stand only the trees of the mind that he chooses--generally
those that flourish in deserts and ruins and which there grow
abnormally. Of such is the crushing predominance of one single
tyrannous form of the Family, of Country, and of the narrow morality
which serves them. The poor creature is proud of it all; and it is he
who is the victim.
Humanity does not dare to massacre itself from interested motives. It
is not proud of its interests, but it does pride itself on its ideas
which are a thousand times more deadly.
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