And why is this? It is because human individuals are not isolated, nor confined to themselves, and to the point they occupy in space or time. They are connected with each other; they act upon each other, by ties and by means which do not require their presence, and which outlive them. Hence the successive generations of men are linked together in unbroken succession.
The permanent union and progressive development which are the consequences of this unbroken succession of man to man, and generation to generation, characterize the human race. They constitute its peculiarity and its greatness, and mark man for sovereignty in this world, and for immortality beyond it.
From this are derived, and by this are founded, the family and the state, property and inheritance, country, history, glory, all the facts and all the sentiments which constitute the extended and perpetual life of mankind, amidst the bounded appearance and rapid disappearance of individual men.
In the Social Republic all this ceases to exist. Men are mere isolated and ephemeral beings, who appear in this life, and on this earth the scene of life, only to take their subsistence and their pleasure, each for himself alone, each by the same right, and without any end or purpose beyond.
This is precisely the condition of the lower animals. Among them there exists no tie, no influence, which survives the individual, and extends to the race. There is no permanent appropriation, no hereditary transmission, no unity nor progress in the life of the species;—nothing but individuals who appear and then vanish, seizing on their passage their portion of the good things of the earth and the pleasures of life, according to the combined measure of their wants and their strength, which, according to them, constitute their right.
Thus, in order to secure to every individual of the human species the equal and incessantly fluctuating share of the goods and pleasures of sense, the doctrines of the Social Republic bring men down to the level of the lower animals. They obliterate the human race.
They do worse.
There is in the mind of man an imperishable instinct that God presides over his destiny, and that it is not wholly accomplished in this world. Naturally and universally, man believes in God and invokes him as his support in the present, his hope in the future.
According to the doctrines of the Social Republic, God is an unknown imaginary power, upon whom the visible and real rulers of men upon earth throw the weight of their own responsibility, and by thus directing the eyes of the suffering towards another master and another state of existence, dispose them to acquiesce in their afflictions, whilst they secure themselves in the maintenance of their usurpations. According then to this doctrine, God is evil, for it is in his name that men are persuaded to acquiesce in evil. To banish evil from the earth, it therefore is necessary to banish God from the mind of man. Men left alone with their earthly masters, and reduced to an earthly existence, will demand the enjoyments of this life and the equal distribution of these enjoyments; and as soon as those who are without them insist on having them, they will have them, for they are the strongest.
Thus God and the human race will disappear together. In their place will remain animals still bearing the name of men, more intelligent and more powerful than other animals, but having the same condition and the same destiny; and like them seizing, on their passage through life, their portion of the goods of earth and the pleasures of sense, according to the combined measure of their wants and their strength, which constitute their right.