This campaign against the anarchists from three different sides must soon bring about disaster.
During this time I was perpetually puzzling over the problem: “Will the idea you have dreamed of be realized within you?... Will it lead to your destruction?... Or will it overwhelm your powers, and lead once more to spiritual syncope?”
By means of an experiment, the matter could be determined!... Supposing one were to distribute broadcast plague bacilli!... If entire towns were to suffer from this disease!... If the fear of death was to seize the whole crowd of those who, in their cowardice at every strike, every demonstration, every fight at the barricades, had hidden behind the stove or crept under the bed!... If this fear of death were to increase to a general panic, affecting entire towns, entire countries, as happened in the middle ages!... If the people, in their despair, should look for the disseminators of the trouble, and should proceed to hew one another to pieces!... Would my relief come then?... Will there be an answer for me?
I shudder to think of the suffering which this would entail for me! I feel that I am not equal to this!... I suffer, on the other hand, inexpressibly, because I have no answer, no recognition, no satisfaction!... I will—and I cannot. To endure longer this hermaphroditic state—this is death or lunacy!... What to do?... How to free oneself from this horrible dilemma?
Oh, why am I not like others?... Why cannot I simply accept that which is?... Why do I torment myself to climb the mountain, in order to stand before a bottomless abyss?... Before an abyss whose secret depths will be manifest to me only if I hurl myself into it!...
What to do?... What to do?... Shall I, or shall I not?... I will!... I must!...
As I was about to do it, I was arrested! Chance or foresight?
Oh, fate, fate! That is too much of suffering!... Oh, mankind, mankind, what have you done?... A single one wished to see. A single one wished to tear a veil from the image—and you have hindered it!... Eternally you will have darkness around you!... But why will you not allow me to see the light?
Is it thus that you thank me, who have loved humanity as no other has loved!
Yes; that is once over again the cruel, the pitiless philosophy of Golgotha—