Some larger-minded spirits remonstrated in vain, that, with or without any label, liberal ideas ought to be welcomed, and that those of Clerambault, however ignorant he might be of the party doctrines, were more truly socialistic than those of members of the party who joined in the work of national slaughter.  These views were over-ruled; Clerambault’s article was returned to him, after spending some weeks in the bottom of a drawer, on the pretext that there were so many current items that they took up all the space, and that the paper had too much copy already.

Clerambault took his article to a small review, which was more attracted by his name than by his ideas.  The upshot was that the review was called down, and suspended by police order the day after the article appeared, though it had been whitewashed through and through.

Clerambault, however, persisted.  The most rebellious people in the world are those who are forced to rebellion after a lifetime of submission.  I remember once to have seen a big sheep so worried by a dog that he finally threw himself upon him.  The dog was overcome by this unexpected reversal of the laws of nature and ran away, howling with surprise and terror.  The Dog-State is too sure of its own fangs to feel afraid of a few mutinous sheep; but the lamb Clerambault no longer calculated the danger; he simply put his head down and butted.  Generous and weak natures are prone to pass without transition from one extreme to another; so from an intensely gregarious feeling Clerambault had jumped at one bound to the extreme of individual isolation.  Because he knew it so well, he could see nothing around him but the plague of obedience, that social suggestion of which the effects are everywhere manifest.  The passive heroism of the armies excited to frenzy, like millions of ants absorbed in the general mass, the servility of Assemblies, despising the head of their Government, but sustaining him by their votes, even at the risk of an explosion brought about by one “bolter,” the sulky but well-drilled submission of even the liberal Parties, sacrificing their very reason for existence to the absurd fetish of abstract unity.  This abdication, this passion, represented the true enemy in Clerambault’s eyes.  And it was his task, he thought, to break down its great suggestive power by awakening doubt, the spirit that eats away all chains.

The chief seat of the disease was the idea of Nation; this inflamed point could not be touched without howls from the beast.  Clerambault attacked it at once, without gloves.

What have I to do with your nations?  Can you expect me to love or hate a nation?  It is men that I love or hate, and in all nations you will find the noble, the base, and the ordinary man.  Yes, and everywhere are few great or low, while the ordinary abound.  Like or dislike a man for what he is, not for what others are; and if there is one man who is dear to me in a whole nation, that prevents me from