less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly
characterized by the fact that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we
produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are.
Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends,
so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the
production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more
savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of
our civilization.

But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and
our civilization?

Simply this:--a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our
boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic
lie--the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose
fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams and
unnameable crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your
civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned
shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading
cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most
malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a
race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking
the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do
the deed not inscribed in the book of practice; a race of pigmies,
slaves to tradition and superstition, lacking all force of individuality
and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that
social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mightier and greater
nations of the ancient world.

It is because of these things that I address myself to you, fellow-men.
Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it
needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of
originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the
scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to
break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women
strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new
and happier ways.

And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the
bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of
the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I
will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to