mously to
wickedness and criminality. This sort of intoxication deteriorates
the brain, filling it with hallucinations, to which the living are
sacrificed.

What an extraordinary spectacle, seen from the interior of our skulls!
A throng of phantoms rising from our overexcited brains: Justice,
Liberty, Right, Country.... Our poor brains are all equally honest,
but each accuses the other of insincerity. In this fantastic shadowy
struggle, we can distinguish nothing but the cries and the convulsions
of the human animal, possessed by devils.... Below are clouds charged
with lightnings, where great fierce birds are fighting; the realists,
the men of affairs, swarm and gnaw like fleas in a skin; with open
mouths, and grasping hands, secretly exciting the folly by which they
profit, but in which they do not share....

O Thought! monstrous and splendid flower springing from the humus
of our time-honoured instincts!... In truth, thou art an element
penetrating and impregnating man, but thou dost not spring from him,
thy source is beyond him, and thy strength greater than his. Our
senses are fairly well-adapted to our needs but our thought is not,
it overflows and maddens us. Very, very few among us men can guide
themselves on this torrent; the far greater number are swept along,
at random, trusting to chance. The tremendous power of thought is not
under man's control; he tries to make it serve him, and his greatest
danger is that he believes that it does so; but he is like a child
handling explosives; there is no proportion between these colossal
engines and the purpose for which his feeble hands employ them.
Sometimes they all blow up together....

How guard against this danger? Shall we stifle thought, uproot living
ideas? That would mean the castration of man's brain, the loss of his
chief stimulus in life; but nevertheless the _eau-de-vie_ of his mind
contains a poison which is the more to be dreaded because it is spread
broadcast among the masses, in the form of adulterated drugs....
Rouse thee, Man, and sober thyself! Look about; shake off ideas. Free
thyself from thine own thoughts and learn to govern thy gigantic
phantoms which devour themselves in their rage.... And begin by
taking the capitals from the names of those great goddesses, Country,
Liberty, Right. Come down from Olympus into the manger, and come
without ornaments, without arms, rich only in your beauty, and our
love.... I do not know the gods of Justice