"Alas! The popular instinct and an inevitable necessity urge men, in spite of words, to enslave themselves, and they will of their own accord submit to the tyranny of new leaders, new groups representing interests of which the crowd will know nothing. Almost all my pessimism is founded on the irresistible character of this law. Men must be commanded, and no one can be sure that those who command will not abuse their authority or the confidence which is freely granted to them. However, the official programme of democracy will be to devote all its effort to the well-being of poor humans who have not an average of fifty years to live in this world, who no longer believe in another world, and who in truth have some legitimate aspirations to live their few years for their own benefit, and with as little pain as possible."
"Poor men!"
"Yes, 'poor men!' That expresses the immense pity that will well up in every breast, throughout the entire universe. Fate will have demanded much of the human race. No doubt man has suffered through all time; but in a manner so prolonged and so scientifically cruel—no! At all events, never have men suffered in such great numbers; never have they been so acutely conscious of their sufferings. And then, in former times men who suffered had not been learnedly informed that the world had come to the end of suffering. Those who are suffering now believed themselves to have reached the highest point of a period of progress in every direction. Never had man more firmly believed himself to be on the border of the Promised Land, than at the very moment when he stumbled into the infernal pit! What an aggravation of torment! Men may have been sacrificed for far-off ends which too often have not been attained; they may have been obliged, merely for their own preservation as living beings, to obliterate their own intelligence, and to become through long years—they themselves have said it—a sort of brute. Those who will survive will not ask the meaning of subtleties, or will not be in a condition to understand them. They will have only one thought: 'And now, what of me, me, me?'"
"A revival of individuality, then?"
"Yes, but of a fierce individuality, in which all that has for so long a time been stifled within them will urge them on to mistaken acts; or else of an exhausted individuality which will be the prey of exploiters never known before."
"Then you do not believe in a general betterment after this upheaval?"
"I only believe in more or less prolonged periods during which faith in betterment is possible."
"But, after all, man has goodness within him! He carries an ideal in his breast!"
"That is to say that he carries within himself—nowhere but in himself—that small portion of happiness which he may ever hope to attain. In fact, I hold him to be truly happy only as he exercises goodness, or as he aspires to what he deems the best. Man, the child, the savage, very clearly recognizes justice, much less clearly the beautiful; but the idea of the beautiful, however imperfect it may be in him, moves and may make him better. If he permits himself to slide down those inclines which deviate from these ideas, he may experience a dizzy joy of a bad kind. He may work himself up to enjoy strange pleasures, but seldom without at the same time perceiving that he is duping himself, and that pure and deep joy is not in these things. Yes, it is in himself that man finds his sole source of felicity, as the glowworm his light. It may be that justice is entirely inapplicable and the beautiful wholly conventional, but what we may be sure of is that the inclination toward the just and the beautiful is most fruitful in happy results, though they will perhaps never find absolute realization."
"That is all very well; but in fact you believe neither in beauty nor in justice!"