What progress would ever have been made,
if those who bore the germ of it had stopped terrified before the
enormous mass of accumulated routine which hung ready to crush them,
above their heads."
"I admit that a scholar is bound to defend the Truth that he has
discovered, but is this social question your mission? You are a poet;
keep to your dreams, and may they prove a defence to you!"
"Before considering myself as a poet, I consider myself as a man, and
every honest man has a mission."
"A mind like yours is too precious and valuable to be sacrificed, it
would be murder."
"Yes, you are willing to sacrifice people who have little to lose." He
was silent for a moment, and then went on:
"Perrotin, I have often thought that we, men of thought, artists, all
of us, we do not live up to our obligations. Not only now, but for a
long time, perhaps always. We are custodians of the portion of Truth
that is in us, a little light, which we have prudently kept for
ourselves. More than once this has troubled me, but I shut my eyes
to it then; now they have been unsealed by suffering. We are the
privileged ones, and that lays duties upon us which we have not
fulfilled; we are afraid of compromising ourselves. There is an
aristocracy of the mind, which claims to succeed to that of blood; but
it forgets that the privileges of the old order were first purchased
with blood.
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