The group of the little ones is wan. All die away and creep along, not having even the power to love; and unknown to them perhaps, while they crouch down and resign themselves, from all that vast unconsciousness in which Right dwells, from the rumbling murmur of those wretched breaths mingled together, proceeds an indescribable confused voice, mysterious mist of language, succeeding, syllable by syllable in the darkness, in uttering extraordinary words,—Future, Humanity, Liberty, Equality, Progress. And the poet listens, and he hears; and he looks, and he sees; and he bends lower and lower, and he weeps; and all at once, growing with a strange growth, drawing from all that darkness his own transfiguration, he stands erect, terrible and tender, above all those wretched ones,—those above as well as those below,—with flaming eyes.
And he demands a reckoning with a loud voice. And he says, Here is the effect! And he says, Here is the cause! Light is the remedy. Erudimini. And he looks like a great vase full of humanity shaken by the hand which is in the cloud, and from whence fall on the earth large drops,—fire for the oppressors, dew for the oppressed. Ah, you find fault with that, you fellows! Well, then, we approve of it, we do! We find it just that some one speaks when all suffer. The ignorant who enjoy and the ignorant who suffer have an equal want of teaching. The law of fraternity is derived from the law of labour. To kill one another has had its day. The hour has come to love one another. It is to promulgate these truths that the poet is good. For that, he must be of the people; for that he must be of the populace,—that is to say, that, bringing progress, he should not recoil before the pressure of facts, however ugly the facts may be. The distance between the real and the ideal cannot be measured otherwise. Besides, to drag the cannon-ball a little completes Vincent de Paul. Hurrah, then, for the trivial promiscuousness, for the popular metaphor, for the great life in common with those exiles from joy who are catted the poor!—this is the first duty of poets. It is useful; it is necessary, that the breath of the people should fill those all-powerful souls. The people have something to say to them. It is good that there should be in Euripides a flavour of the herb-dealers at Athens, and in Shakespeare of the sailors of London.
Sacrifice to "the mob," O poet! Sacrifice to that unfortunate, disinherited, vanquished, vagabond, shoeless, famished, repudiated, despairing mob; sacrifice to it, if it must be and when it must be, thy repose, thy fortune, thy joy, thy country, thy liberty, thy life. The mob is the human race in misery. The mob is the mournful commencement of the people. The mob is the great victim of darkness. Sacrifice to it! Sacrifice thyself! Let thyself be hunted, let thyself be exiled as Voltaire to Ferney, as D'Aubigné to Geneva, as Dante to Verona, as Juvenal to Syene, as Tacitus to Methymna, as Æschylus to Gela, as John to Patmos, as Elias to Horeb, as Thucydides to Thrace, as Isaiah to Esiongeber! Sacrifice to the mob. Sacrifice to it thy gold, and thy blood which is more than thy gold, and thy thought which is more than thy blood, and thy love which is more than thy thought; sacrifice to it everything except justice. Receive its complaint; listen to its faults, and to the faults of others. Listen to what it has to confess and to denounce to thee. Stretch forth to it the ear, the hand, the arm, the heart. Do everything for it, excepting evil. Alas! it suffers so much, and it knows nothing. Correct it, warm it, instruct it, guide it, bring it up. Put it to the school of honesty. Make it spell truth; show it that alphabet, reason; teach it to read virtue, probity, generosity, mercy. Hold thy book wide open. Be there, attentive, vigilant, kind, faithful, humble. Light up the brain, inflame the mind, extinguish egotism, show good example. The poor are privation: be abnegation. Teach! irradiate! They need thee; thou art their great thirst To learn is the first step; to live is but the second. Be at their order, dost thou hear? Be ever there, light! For it is beautiful, on this sombre earth, during this dark life, short passage to something else, it is beautiful that Force should have Right for a master, that Progress should have Courage as a chief, that Intelligence should have Honour as a sovereign, that Conscience should have Duty as a despot, that Civilization should have Liberty as a queen, that Ignorance should have a servant,—Light.
[BOOK V.]
THE MINDS AND THE MASSES.
CHAPTER I.
For the last eighty years memorable things have been done. A wonderful heap of demolished materials covers the pavement.
What is done is but little by the side of what remains to be done.
To destroy is the task: to build is the work. Progress demolishes with the left hand; it is with the right hand that it builds.