id Clerambault ironically. "And this is a
free country? Free, yes, because there have always been, and always
will be some souls like mine, which refuse to bend to a yoke which
their conscience disavows. We are become a nation of tyrants. There
was no great advantage in taking the Bastille. In the old days one ran
the risk of perpetual imprisonment if one made so bold as to differ
from the Prince--the fagot, if you did not agree with the Church; but
now you must think with forty millions of men and follow them in their
frantic contradictions. One day you must scream: "Down with England!"
Tomorrow it will be: "Down with Germany!" and the next day it may be
the turn of Italy; and _da capo_ in a week or two. Today we acclaim a
man or an idea, tomorrow we shall insult him; and anyone who refuses
risks dishonour--or a pistol bullet. This is the most ignoble and
shameful servitude of all!... By what right do a hundred, a thousand,
one or forty millions of men, demand that I shall renounce my soul?
Each of them has one, like mine. Forty millions of souls together
often make only one, which has denied itself forty millions of
times.... I think what I think. Go you and do likewise. The living
truth can be re-born only from the equilibrium of opposing thoughts.
To make the citizen respect the city, it must be reciprocal; each has
his soul. It is his right and his first duty is to be true to it....
I have no illusions, and in this world of prey I do not attribute an
exaggerated importance to my own conscience, but however small we may
be or little we may do, we must exist. We are all liable to err, but
deceived or not, a man should be sincere; an honest mistake is not a
lie, but a stage on the road to truth. The real lie is to fear the
truth and try to stifle it. Even if you were a thousand times right,
if you resort to force to crush a sincere mistake, you commit the most
odious crime against reason itself. If reason is persecutor, and error
persecuted, I am for the victim, for error has rights as well as
truth.... Truth--the real truth, is to be always seeking what is true,
and to respect the efforts of those who suffer in the pursuit. If you
insult a man who is striving to hew out his path, if you persecute him
who wishes, and perhaps fails, to find less inhuman roads for human
progress, you make a martyr of him. Your way is the best, the only
one, you say? Follow it then, and let me follow mine. I do not oblige
you to come with