g with them,
derived it from the soil in which they grew, for they transmitted it one
to the other, without a pause, from civilisation to civilisation, however
diverse and contrary their minds. It has all been, so to say, a
continuous blossoming of human vanity, a passionate desire to set one's
name on an imperishable wall, and, after being master of the world, to
leave behind one an indestructible trace, a tangible proof of one's
passing glory, an eternal edifice of bronze and marble fit to attest that
glory until the end of time. At the bottom the spirit of conquest, the
proud ambition to dominate the world, subsists; and when all has
crumbled, and a new society has sprung up from the ruins of its
predecessor, men have erred in imagining it to be cured of the sin of
pride, steeped in humility once more, for it has had the old blood in its
veins, and has yielded to the same insolent madness as its ancestors, a
prey to all the violence of its heredity directly it has become great and
strong. Among the illustrious popes there has not been one that did not
seek to build, did not revert to the traditions of the Caesars,
eternising their reigns in stone and raising temples for resting-places,
so as to rank among the gods. Ever the same passion for terrestrial
immortality has burst forth: it has been a battle as to who should leave
the highest, most substantial, most gorgeous monument; and so acute has
been the disease that those who, for lack of means and opportunity, have
been unable to build, and have been forced to content themselves with
repairing, have, nevertheless, desired to bequeath the memory of their
modest achievements to subsequent generations by commemorative marble
slabs engraved with pompous inscriptions! These slabs are to be seen on
every side: not a wall has ever been strengthened but some pope has
stamped it with his arms, not a ruin has been restored, not a palace
repaired, not a fountain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the
work with his Roman and pagan title of "Pontifex Maximus." It is a
haunting passion, a form of involuntary debauchery, the fated florescence
of that compost of ruins, that dust of edifices whence new edifices are
ever arising. And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil
almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that resolute
passion for domination and that desire for terrestrial glory which
wrought the triumph of Catholicism in scorn of the humble and pu