Dear Friend,
Your letter is a new proof of your affection. I have known for a long time that you are not one of us,—have known it from the day when you discovered that it would be money ill spent to contribute a legacy as a proof of respect to my life work. You find my work useless,—almost harmful; but at the same time you love Martha and Löwos, and would like to spare Martha pain. But, my dear, if I did not feel pain what would be the impulse for my work? Certainly not, as my enemies say, vanity? You surely do not believe that? No, pain at the way men stick to their barbarism is what penetrates me and compels me to oppose my weak activity against the general inaction. If one should keep waiting for the next century or so for things to be done of themselves, they would never get done. After the principle of railroads was discovered (they, too, were sufficiently opposed), locomotives and tracks had also to be built, without waiting until a future generation should be ripe for such a mode of travel....
The war that does not break out because of worry over the responsibility, that is to say, because of the excess of armaments, is not peace, for it is doubly precarious: in the first place, because the armaments are in themselves ruinous, materially and morally, for they exhaust all resources, they enslave and degrade men, and they must keep alive the spirit of war and the worship of force, which is happening in all schools at the present time; secondly, because the explosion of the powder magazine is left to depend on the arbitrary will of a few people....
Of course disarmament—especially of a single state—cannot begin immediately; but just as the interminable increase of armaments is the consequence of the anarchy that prevails in the mutual relations of states, so would disarmament be the consequence of their mutual relations based upon law....
And if only people would not keep saying to us believers in evolution that the progress of culture is slow, as if we did not know it! But, because of that, to leave the first steps to the next generations and stand still ourselves is not a correct way to apply our knowledge of the slowness of the general movement forward; for we ought also to know that this trifling advance of the whole mass is the result of the greatest haste and the greatest output of energy on the part of single atoms.
... Yes, you are right; one looks calmly into the face of the unalterable and is spared painful disillusionment; but you are not right in adding that with such a realization I could maintain the same activity; for I regard the present state of things as not unalterable, and my whole activity consists in nothing else whatever than in modest but steady coöperation, according to my ability, in bringing about the change.
Your scruples about the Universal Court of Arbitration now in process of establishment rest upon an erroneous conception of the plan. That is usually the cause of mistaken judgments. It is believed that Mr. X is aiming at something irrational, and one therefore hesitates about helping Mr. X. On the other hand, Mr. X knows very accurately all the objections to what is attributed to him; unfortunately, however, the real thing that he wants is not known....
“Share your indifference in the way I regard that ancient beast, Man, and his constant readiness to heap up inflammables on inflammables.” No, the “young God” in man cannot have this indifference if he is going to conquer the ancient beast in man. The great heaps of inflammables, which are to-day growing smaller and smaller, even though they are still predominant, must not be left under the illusion that their realm is inviolable; and besides,
“He is guilty of half the harm
Who, to stop it, will not lift an arm.”