The veneration for time, for accumulated years, for the dead, and for the dying.
The instinctive need of laws, chains, and impediments.
Horror of violence.
Horror of the unknown and the new.
Fear of a total liberty.
Have you never seen an assemblage of young revolutionaries or anarchists?... Eh bien: there is no more discouraging spectacle.
You would observe that the urgent, immediate mania, in these red souls, is to deprive themselves quickly of their vehement independence, to give the government of their party to the oldest of their number; that is to say, to the greatest opportunist, to the most prudent, in a word, to the one who having already acquired a little force, and a little authority, will be fatally interested in conserving the present state of things, in calming violence, in opposing all desire for adventure, for risk, and heroism.
This new president, while guiding them in the general discussion with apparent equity, shall lead them like sheep to the fold of his personal interest.
Do you still believe seriously in the usefulness or desirability of conventions of revolutionary spirits?
Content yourself then, with choosing a director, or, better still, a leader of discussion. Choose for that post the youngest amongst you, the least known, the least important; only his role must never supersede the simple distribution of the word, with an absolute equality of time that he shall control, the watch in his hand.