These
kill, sacrificing themselves and others, but at least they know what
they do. But what of those who have ceased to believe (like me, alas!
and you)? Their sons are sacrificed to a lie, for if you assert what
you doubt, it is a falsehood, and they offer up their own children to
prove this lie to themselves; and now that our beloved have died for
it, far from confessing it, we hide our heads still deeper not to see
what we have done. After our sons will come others, all the others,
offered up for our untruth_.
_I for my part can bear it no longer, when I think of those who still
live. Does it soothe my pain to inflict injury on others? Am I a
savage of Homer's time that I should believe that the sorrow of my
dead son will be appeased, and his craving for light satisfied, if
I sprinkle the earth which covers him with the blood of other men's
sons?--Are we at that stage still?--No, each new murder kills my son
again, and heaps the heavy mud of crime over his grave. He was the
future; if I would save the future, I must save him also, and rescue
fathers to come from the agony that I endure. Come then, and help me!
Cast out these falsehoods! Surely it is not for our sakes that men
wage these combats between nations, this universal brigandage? What
good is it to us? A tree grows up straight and tall, stretching out
branches around it, full of free-flowing sap; so is a man who labours
calmly, and sees the slow development of the many-sided life in his
veins fulfil itself in him and in his sons.
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