spectability. There are limits
to what a mule or an ass will stand; but Man will suffer himself to be
degraded until his vileness becomes so loathsome to his oppressors that
they themselves are forced to reform it.

THE DEVIL. Precisely. And these are the creatures in whom you discover
what you call a Life Force!

DON JUAN. Yes; for now comes the most surprising part of the whole
business.

THE STATUE. What's that?

DON JUAN. Why, that you can make any of these cowards brave by simply
putting an idea into his head.

THE STATUE. Stuff! As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as
universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But that about
putting an idea into a man's head is stuff and nonsense. In a battle all
you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that
it's more dangerous to lose than to win.

DON JUAN. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men never
really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to further a
universal purpose--fighting for an idea, as they call it. Why was the
Crusader braver than the pirate? Because he fought, not for himself, but
for the Cross. What force was it that met him with a valor as reckless
as his own? The force of men who fought, not for themselves, but for
Islam. They took Spain from us, though we were fighting for our very
hearths and homes; but when we, too, fought for that mighty idea, a
Catholic Church, we swept them back to Africa.

THE DEVIL. [ironically] What! you a Catholic, Senor Don Juan! A devotee!
My congratulations.

THE STATUE. [seriously] Come come! as a soldier, I can listen to nothing
against the Church.

DON JUAN. Have no fear, Commander: this idea of a Catholic Church will
survive Islam, will survive the Cross, will survive even that vulgar
pageant of incompetent schoolboyish gladiators which you call the Army.

THE STATUE. Juan: you will force me to call you to account for this.

DON JUAN. Useless: I cannot fence. Every idea for which Man will die
will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last that he is no
better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better than Mahomet, he will
arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on a barricade across the filthy
slum he starves in, for universal liberty and equality.

THE STATUE. Bosh!

DON JUAN. What you call bosh is the only thing men dare die for.
Later on, Liberty will not be Catholic enough: men will die for human
perfection, to which th