“Be silent and wary, for there are sharp eyes on you....  To keep you from action there are sentries, corporals with stripes on their arms, and sentries, too, over your minds; churches and universities that prescribe what you may believe, and what you may not....  What do you complain of, they say, even if you are not complaining.  You must not fatigue your mind by thinking; repeat your catechism!

“Are we not told that this catechism was freely agreed to by the sovereign people?—­A fine sovereignty, truly!  Idiots, who puff out your cheeks over the word Democracy!  Democracy is the art of usurping the people’s place, of shearing their wool off closely, in this holy name, for the benefit of some of Democracy’s good apostles.  In peace times the people only know what goes on through the press, which is bought and told what to say by those whose interest it is to hoodwink the public, while the truth is kept under lock and key.  In war time it is even better, for then it is the people themselves who are locked up.  Allowing that they have ever known what they wanted, it is no longer possible for them to speak above their breath.  Obey. Perinde ac cadaver....  Ten millions of corpses....  The living are hardly better off, depressed as they are by four years of sham patriotism, circus-parades, tom-toms, threats, braggings, hatreds, informers, trials for treason, and summary executions.  The demagogues have called in all the reserves of obscurantism to extinguish the last gleams of good sense that lingered in the people, and to reduce them to imbecility.

“It is not enough to debase them; they must be so stupefied that they wish to be debased.  The formidable autocracies of Egypt, Persia, and Syria, made playthings of the lives of millions of men; and the secret of their power lay in the supernatural light of their pseudo-divinity.  From the extreme limit of the ages of credulity, every absolute monarchy has been a theocracy.  In our democracies, however, it is impossible to believe in the divinity of humbugs, shaky and discredited, like some of our moth-eaten Ministers; we are too close to them, we know their dirty tricks, so they have invented the idea of concealing God behind their drop-curtain; God means the Republic, the Country, Justice, Civilisation; the names are painted up on the outside.  Each booth at the fair displays in huge many-coloured posters, the picture of its Beautiful Giantess; millions crowd around to see it, but they do not tell us what they think when they come out.  Perhaps they found it difficult to think at all!  Some stay inside and others have seen nothing.  But those who stand in front of the stage gaping, they know God is there for they have seen His picture.  The wish that we have to believe in Him—­that is the god of each one of us.

“Why does this desire flame up so furiously?  Because we do not want to see the truth—­and therefore because we do see it.  Therein lies the tragedy of humanity; it refuses to see and know.  As a last resort, it is forced to find divinity in the mire.  Let us, on our part, dare to look the truth in the face.