What a devastation of humanity results from the acquirements of civilization in respect of engineering and the practical arts!... Every invention and discovery demands its victims!...
How often have chemists been destroyed by an explosion in the creation of new compounds, or killed by the development of poisonous vapours!
Count the engineers who have been sacrificed to their profession, or bacteriologists who have been killed through infection in the study of zymotic diseases!
Count all the victims of professional diseases, of tuberculosis, phosphorus necrosis, lead poisoning, mercurial poisoning, etc.!... Count all those who have fallen from scaffoldings, all the sailors who have been drowned, all the railway employees who have been run over, all the factory hands who have been torn to pieces by machinery, all those who have been destroyed in mines by explosions, etc.!
Think of the hunger and misery of the widows and children of these victims of industry and science, of the loss of work and other social injuries resulting from capitalism!
The rebellion of the victims of this system, again, gives rise to the class war, with new tortures, new sufferings!... In order ultimately, by the creation of a new social system in the future, to free mankind from these sufferings!... People believe it! But that is nonsense! The sufferings will only assume a new form, and will increase!!
Do you, then, believe that all the miseries of mankind at the present time have been the result only of chance, not of foresight?
Oh, no! These sufferings were only the stimulus which drove mankind forward to new construction, to greater progress, in order to avoid suffering!... Progress brought new suffering, and so on.
“Thus suffering is the civilizing factor of mankind! To free mankind from suffering would mean to rob mankind of civilization.”
Can we represent to ourselves a life of complete satisfaction?