man would
be plundered and even killed, and his treasures divided between you. We
forget that the rich man is human; we deny him the mercy which the poor
man claims from his fellowmen; we take up the position that to reduce a
rich man to beggary is not the same injustice as to profit by the work
of a poor man; we enjoy the idea of the rich man, hungry and shivering,
when at the same time the hungry shivering poor man has become our
pretext for robbing the other. Do you believe that you would then have
improved your lot in life? Do you think that you would be any happier?
Just think it over for a moment. The rich people are exterminated,
their goods are divided among you; you are already making a discovery,
viz., that the wealthy people are in a very small minority, hardly one
in two hundred, and that the division of their whole property amounts
to very little for each of you. But suppose, for the sake of argument,
that you all become rich. What then? You throw away your working
clothes and dress yourselves in silk; you deck yourselves with silver
and gold ornaments, and you sit on soft-cushioned sofas. Think how long
these luxuries would last--a month perhaps, at the most a year. Then
the rich man's wine is all drunk, and his larder empty, the silk
clothes are worn out, and the sofas torn; you cannot eat precious
stones and gold, and if you do not mean to starve you must begin
working again, and after the extermination of the rich man and the
division of his property you are exactly in the position you were in
before."

He paused a moment or two, in which there was silence for the first
time, and then went on:

"This all means that your bondage is not laid on you by man, but by
Nature herself. Life is hard and wearisome, and no laws or orders of
State or society can make it otherwise. The simple minds of men
understood this a thousand years ago, and they did not rest until they
had found out a reason for everything, so they sought through the
authors of the Jewish Bible for a reasonable explanation of our
mournful destiny on this earth, and comforted themselves with the
assertion that mankind was atoning for the sins of its forefathers.
You, the sons of the nineteenth century, do not believe in this any
longer, but see in the system of profits and the injustice of our
social conditions the causes of your misery. Your explanation is,
however, fully as much a fabrication as the Biblical one. Pain and
death are the con