adults, and we have only
to make use of our rights to reduce the pretensions of this self-styled
authority to their just value. It has power on its side and nothing
more. But "a pistol in the hand of a brigand is also power," but do you
think that I should be morally obliged to give him my purse?--I obey
only compelled by force and I will have my purse back as soon as I can
take his pistol away from him.

VII: The Lost Children.

The lost children of the philosophic party.--Naigeon,
Sylvain Marechal, Mably, Morelly.--The entire discredit of
traditions and institutions derived from it.

We stop here. It is pointless to follow the lost children of the party,
Naigeon and Sylvain Marechal, Mably and Morelly, the fanatics that set
atheism up as an obligatory dogma and a superior duty; the socialists
who, to suppress egoism, propose a community of property, and who found
a republic in which any man that proposes to re-establish "detestable
ownership" shall be declared an enemy of humanity, treated as a "raging
maniac" and shut up in a dungeon for life. It is sufficient to have
studied the operations of large armies and of great campaigns.--With
different gadgets and opposite tactics, the various attacks have all had
the same results, all the institutions have been undermined from below.
The governing ideology has withdrawn all authority from custom, from
religion, from the State. Not only is it assumed that tradition in
itself is false, but again that it is harmful through its works, that it
builds up injustice on error, and that by rendering man blind it leads
him to oppress. Henceforth it is outlawed. Let this "loathsome thing"
with its supporters be crushed out. It is the great evil of the human
species, and, when suppressed, only goodness will remain.

"The time will then come[3342] when the sun will shine only on free men
recognizing no other master than Reason; when tyrants and slaves, and
priests with their senseless or hypocritical instruments will exist only
in history and on the stage; when attention will no longer be bestowed
on them except to pity their victims and their dupes, keeping oneself
vigilant and useful through horror of their excesses, and able to
recognize and extinguish by the force of Reason the first germs of
superstition and of tyranny, should they ever venture to reappear."

The millennium is dawning and it is once more Reason, which should set
it up. In this way we shall