“That scented fellow is not without eyes,” said he; and a shout of laughter greeted him.
His eyes settled on his theme; and when the silence came he burst roughly into his harangue:
“Nietzsche has spoken the last word,” said he. “Man has arrived above the world’s shambles by struggle alone—he is the fittest to survive. There is no other law. The strongest shall succeed. Existence is an anarchy; and they alone have rights who make them. Yet man, forsooth, arriving at the top of things by mastery, decides Nature to be brutal, forgets that he is where he is by the ruthless selection of the fittest, and being arrived at supremacy in Nature, he thinks to hold Nature back by overthrowing her supreme law—he refuses to let the weak go to the wall, refuses to leave the sick to die, hangs the strong man who slays the weakling, and flouts the very nature which put him a-top of the brutalities to bestride the world! But Nature is not to be flouted. She proceeds, with contempt of all opposition, to evolve the ultimate over-man, the Beyond-Man—the healthy, strong, ruthless, vigorous overlord. Man is the most splendid brute—at the base of him is the scarlet lust of war. The cultured and the effete and the timid quake, frightened at the vision of the Beyond-Man, not daring to acknowledge that the ruthless survive. And to what do they appeal? to art and civilization and religion. Well! these be pleasant toys—but in what manner have these things been of use to make man stronger, better equipped for the ruthless struggle for mastery, and to produce a more ruthless breed? The day and life of the whole modern state is a lie—it swarms with churches, mouths its creed of loving your neighbour as yourself. But what are its acts? I tell you it is moved by an aristocratic morality—a code which has no slightest intention of loving his neighbour. There is no democracy—men are not equal, but wholly unequal. But there is cheer for you, my comrades of the corduroy breeches—you of the hard hands and the vigorous life. The Beyond-Man is not of the nerveless race of puppet kings, indeed what hath a king to-day but his robes and his fal-lals and his fineries? The Beyond-Man is not of the enervated crowd of hereditary nobles—like that scented apparition that has just spoken. He is not the fat-bellied flabby burgess, grown soft behind a counter. He is of the master-wits amongst the workers—men whose bodies are hardened by toil, whose vigour is a live thing from the habit of a strenuous life. It is our turn.” He paused, and added hoarsely: “Up, then, and change the face of the world! Up and seize the good things the gods dangle before your eyes for the seizing. Take them as these others have taken them—by sinew and strength of arm. Pluck from kings their magnificence—not to give it to the aristocracy whom feudalism created lords paramount to usurp kingship—not to the smug burgess whom you enfranchised with your blood at the Revolution—nay, the nobles were more picturesque and not a whit more brutal than the trader, for the sweating-dens are many and each hath a thousand victims for one that knew the rack, each den more populous than the Bastille! Pluck their riches from the burgess and hang him where he hanged the nobles—the lamp-post is still an emblem of civilization. And if you fail a time or so, do the prison and the frozen road of winter leave your belly more empty than the humanitarian State? Has the felon’s cell a harder task than such as many a worker lives in the free air—God help us—the free air of this Rien-publique! Danger is the strong man’s plaything—the whetstone of mastery. Vive l’Anarchie!”
He stepped forward as he ended his fierce apostrophe, and shouted it hoarsely:
“Vive l’Anarchie!”
The great throats of the workmen flung back the cry with a mighty shout; and the students cried applause, setting their canes rapping upon the floor.
The cheers set Gavroche’s conceit jigging. He stood, his heavy face glowing in the down-flung light. The shadows played about his eye-pits and high cheek-bones and broad nostrils and heavy chin, and ran down the deep throat; and the light revealed the strong jaw of the man who carries out his contentions.
But even as he stood, a big man arose in the midst of the bohemians and students, and said in loud clear accents:
“Thou fool!”
The students shouted with laughter; and the mood of the workmen changed, as a Frenchman’s quick subtle mind will change at a ridiculous situation. The vast crowd burst into merriment.