Above all, we must recast in a positive form the negative commandments which we have inherited from the Ancient Law.  Thus where it is written, “Thou shalt not lie!” let us understand, “Thou shalt always speak the truth, in season and out of season!” although it is we ourselves, and not others, who are judges in each case of this seasonableness.  And for “Thou shalt not kill!” let us understand, “Thou shalt give life and increase it!” And for “Thou shalt not steal!” let us say, “Thou shalt increase the general wealth!” And for “Thou shalt not commit adultery!” “Thou shalt give children, healthy, strong, and good, to thy country and to heaven!” And thus with all the other commandments.

He who does not lose his life shall not find it.  Give yourself then to others, but in order to give yourself to them, first dominate them.  For it is not possible to dominate except by being dominated.  Everyone nourishes himself upon the flesh of that which he devours.  In order that you may dominate your neighbour you must know and love him.  It is by attempting to impose my ideas upon him that I become the recipient of his ideas.  To love my neighbour is to wish that he may be like me, that he may be another I—­that is to say, it is to wish that I may be he; it is to wish to obliterate the division between him and me, to suppress the evil.  My endeavour to impose myself upon another, to be and live in him and by him, to make him mine—­which is the same as making myself his—­is that which gives religious meaning to human collectivity, to human solidarity.

The feeling of solidarity originates in myself; since I am a society, I feel the need of making myself master of human society; since I am a social product, I must socialize myself, and from myself I proceed to God—­who is I projected to the All—­and from God to each of my neighbours.

My immediate first impulse is to protest against the inquisitor and to prefer the merchant who comes to offer me his wares.  But when my impressions are clarified by reflection, I begin to see that the inquisitor, when he acts from a right motive, treats me as a man, as an end in myself, and if he molests me it is from a charitable wish to save my soul; while the merchant, on the other hand, regards me merely as a customer, as a means to an end, and his indulgence and tolerance is at bottom nothing but a supreme indifference to my destiny.  There is much more humanity in the inquisitor.

Similarly there is much more humanity in war than in peace.  Non-resistance to evil implies resistance to good, and to take the offensive, leaving the defensive out of the question, is perhaps the divinest thing in humanity.  War is the school of fraternity and the bond of love; it is war that has brought peoples into touch with one another, by mutual aggression and collision, and has been the cause of their knowing and loving one another.  Human love knows no purer embrace, or one more fruitful in its consequences,