; live force finishes what the idea
has sketched out; Prometheus chained begins, Arostogeiton ends; the
encyclopedia enlightens souls, the 10th of August electrifies them.
After AEschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot, Danton. Multitudes have
a tendency to accept the master. Their mass bears witness to apathy.
A crowd is easily led as a whole to obedience. Men must be stirred up,
pushed on, treated roughly by the very benefit of their deliverance,
their eyes must be wounded by the true, light must be hurled at them
in terrible handfuls. They must be a little thunderstruck themselves at
their own well-being; this dazzling awakens them. Hence the necessity
of tocsins and wars. Great combatants must rise, must enlighten nations
with audacity, and shake up that sad humanity which is covered
with gloom by the right divine, Caesarian glory, force, fanaticism,
irresponsible power, and absolute majesty; a rabble stupidly occupied in
the contemplation, in their twilight splendor, of these sombre triumphs
of the night. Down with the tyrant! Of whom are you speaking? Do you
call Louis Philippe the tyrant? No; no more than Louis XVI. Both of them
are what history is in the habit of calling good kings; but principles
are not to be parcelled out, the logic of the true is rectilinear, the
peculiarity of truth is that it lacks complaisance; no concessions,
then; all encroachments on man should be repressed. There is a divine
right in Louis XVI., there is because a Bourbon in Louis Philippe; both
represent in a certain measure the confiscation of right, and, in order
to clear away universal insurrection, they must be combated; it must
be done, France being always the one to begin. When the master falls
in France, he falls everywhere. In short, what cause is more just, and
consequently, what war is greater, than that which re-establishes
social truth, restores her throne to liberty, restores the people to the
people, restores sovereignty to man, replaces the purple on the head of
France, restores equity and reason in their plenitude, suppresses every
germ of antagonism by restoring each one to himself, annihilates the
obstacle which royalty presents to the whole immense universal concord,
and places the human race once more on a level with the right? These
wars build up peace. An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges,
superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and
darkness still stands erect in this world, with its