Doctor Haenle. I believe he will.
Helene. And when he wins my parents he will secure an influence that will help usher in the Better Day. Besides——
Lassalle. Besides?
Helene. [Laughing] I am engaged to marry Prince Racowitza!
Lassalle. [Smiling] True, I forgot. But when he sees the Goddess of the Dawn and the Socialistic Sun-God together, he will give them his blessing and renounce all claims.
Helene. Exactly so.
Doctor Haenle. Which is certainly better than to snip him off without first tying the ligature.
Frau Holthoff. This whole situation is really amusing when one takes a cool look at it. Here is Helene betrothed to Prince Racowitza, who is intelligent, kind, amiable, good, unobjectionable. And because society demands that a girl shall marry somebody, she accepts the situation, and until Lassalle, the vagrant planet, came shooting through space, this girl of aspiration and ambition would have actually wedded the unobjectionable man and herself become unobjectionable to please her unobjectionable parents.
Herr Holthoff. That is a plain, judicial statement of the case, made by the wife of a fairly good man.
Lassalle. Error set in motion continues indefinitely, all according to the physical law of inertia. The customs of society continue, and are always regarded by the many as perfect—in fact, divine. This continues until some one called a demagogue and a fanatic suggests a change. This talk of change causes a little wobble in the velocity of the error, but it still spins forward and crushes and mangles all who get in the way. That is what you call orthodoxy—the subjection of the many. The men, run over and mangled, are spoken of as "dangerous."