“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.
“The instinct of murder is deeply engraved in the heart of nature. It is a truly devilish instinct, since it seems to have created beings not only to eat, but to be eaten. One species of cormorants eats fishes. The fishermen exterminate the birds. And the fish disappear, because they fed on the excrement of the birds who devoured them. Thus the chain of beings is like a serpent eating his own tail. … If only we were not sentient beings, did not witness our own tortures, we might escape from this hell. There are two ways only: that of Buddha, who effaced within himself the painful illusion of life; and the religious way, which throws the veil of a dazzling falsehood over crime and sorrow. Those who devour others are said to be the chosen people who work for God. The weight of sin, thrown into one of the scales of life, finds its counterpoise beyond in the dream where all wounds and sorrows are to be cured. The form of the beyond varies from people to people and from time to time, and these variations are called Progress, though it is always the same need of illusion. Our terrible consciousness insists on seeing and reckoning with the unjust law; for if we do not give it something to bite on, fill its maw somehow, it will howl with hunger and fear, crying out: ‘I must have belief or death!’ And that is why we go in flocks; for security, to make a common certainty out of our individual doubts.
“What have we to do with truth? Most men think that truth is the Adversary. Of course they do not say this, but by a tacit agreement what they call truth is a sickening mixture of much falsehood and very little truth, which serves to paint over the lie so that we get deceit and eternal slavery. Not the monuments of faith and love are the most durable, those of servitude last much longer. Rheims and the Parthenon fall to ruins, but the Pyramids of Egypt defy the ages; all about them is the desert, its mirages and its moving sand. When I think of the millions of souls swallowed up by the spirit of slavery in the course of centuries—heretics, revolutionists, rebels lay and clerical—I am no longer surprised at the mediocrity that spreads like greasy water over the world.
“We who have so far kept our heads above the gloomy surface, what are we to do in face of the implacable universe, where the stronger eternally crushes the weaker, and is crushed by a stronger yet, in his turn? Shall we resign ourselves to a voluntary sacrifice through pity or weariness? Or shall we join in and cut the throats of the weak, without the shadow of an illusion as to the blind cosmic cruelty? What choice is left, but to try to keep out of the struggle through selfishness—or wisdom, which is another form of the same thing?”
In the crisis of acute pessimism which had seized upon Clerambault during these months of inhuman isolation, he could not contemplate even
