“I see you, you myriads of herded peoples, hugging together perforce in shoals to spawn and to think! Each group of you, like the bees, has a special sacred odour of its own. The stench of the queen-bee makes the unity of the hive and gives joy to the labour of the bees. As with the ants, whosoever does not stink like me, I kill! O you beehives of men! each of you has its own peculiar smell of race, religion, morals and approved tradition; it impregnates your bodies, your wax, the brood-comb of your hives; it permeates your entire lives from birth to death; and woe to him who would wash himself clean of it.
“He who would sense the mustiness of this swarm-thinking, the night-sweat of a hallucinated people, should look back at the rites and beliefs of ancient history. Let him ask the quizzical Herodotus to unroll for him the film of human wanderings, the long panorama of social customs, sometimes ignoble or ridiculous, but always venerated; of the Scythians, the Getae, the Issedones, the Gindares, the Nasamones, the Sauromates, the Lydians, the Libyans, and the Egyptians; bipeds of all colours, from East to West and from North to South. The Great King, who was a man of wit, asked the Greeks, who burn their dead, to eat them; and the Hindus, who eat them, to burn them, and was much amused by their indignation. The wise Herodotus who doffs his cap, though he may grin behind it, will not judge them himself and does not think it fair to laugh at them. He says: ‘If it were proposed to all men to choose between the best laws of different nations, each one would give the preference to his own; so true it is that every man is convinced that his own country is the best. Nothing can be truer than the words of Pindar:
Custom is the Sovereign of all men.’“It is true everyone must drink out of his own trough, but you would at least think that we would allow others to do likewise; but not at all, we cannot enjoy our own without spitting in that of our neighbours. It is the will of God—for a god we must have in some shape, in that of man or beast, or even of a thing, a black or red line as in the Middle Ages—a blackbird, a crow, a blazon of some kind; we must have something on which to throw the responsibility of our insanities.
“Now that the coat-of-arms has been superseded by the flag, we declare that we are freed from superstitions! But at what time were they darker than they are now? Under our new doctrine of equality we are all obliged to smell exactly alike. We are not even free to say that we are not free; that would be sacrilege! With the pack on our back we must bawl out: ‘Liberty forever!’ Under the orders of her father, the daughter of Cheops made herself a harlot that she might contribute by her body to the building of the pyramid. And now to raise the pyramids of our massive republics, millions of citizens prostitute their consciences and themselves, body and soul, to falsehood and hate. We have become past masters in the great art of lying. True, it was always known, but the difference between us and our forefathers is that they knew themselves to be liars, and were not far from admitting it in their simple way; it was a necessity of nature—they relieved themselves before the passersby, as you see men do today in the South. … ‘I shall lie,’ said Darius, innocently. ‘One should not be too scrupulous when it is useful to tell a lie. Those who speak the truth want the same thing as those who tell falsehoods. We do so in the hope of gaining some advantage, and we are truthful for the same reason and that people may feel confidence in us. Thus, though we may not follow the same road, we are all aiming at the same thing, for if there were naught to gain, a truth-teller would be equally ready to lie, and a liar to tell the truth.’—We, my dear contemporaries, are more modest; we do not look on at each other telling falsehoods on the curb. It must be done behind four walls. We lie to ourselves, and we never confess it, not even to our innermost selves. No, we do not lie, we ‘idealise.’ … Come, let us see your eyes, and let them see clearly, if you are free men!
“Free! What are you free from, and which of you is free in your countries today? Are you free to act? No, since the State disposes of your life, so that you must either assassinate others or be yourselves assassinated. Are you free to speak or to write? No, for they imprison you if you dare to speak your mind. Can you even think for yourselves? Not unless it is sub rosa—and the bottom of a cellar is none too secure.
“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
