Rheims and the Parthenon
fall to ruins, but the Pyramids of Egypt defy the ages; all about them
is the desert, its mirages and its moving sand. When I think of the
millions of souls swallowed up by the spirit of slavery in the course
of centuries--heretics, revolutionists, rebels lay and clerical,--I am
no longer surprised at the mediocrity that spreads like greasy water
over the world.
"We who have so far kept our heads above the gloomy surface, what
are we to do in face of the implacable universe, where the stronger
eternally crushes the weaker, and is crushed by a stronger yet, in his
turn? Shall we resign ourselves to a voluntary sacrifice through pity
or weariness? Or shall we join in and cut the throats of the weak,
without the shadow of an illusion as to the blind cosmic cruelty?
What choice is left, but to try to keep out of the struggle through
selfishness--or wisdom, which is another form of the same thing?"
In the crisis of acute pessimism which had seized upon Clerambault
during these months of inhuman isolation, he could not contemplate
even the possibility of progress; that progress in which he had once
believed, as men do in God. The human species now appeared to him as
devoted to a murderous destiny. After having ravaged the planet and
exterminated other species, it was now to be destroyed by its own
hands.
Pages:
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216