The history
of the growth of the state, of public authority and compulsion, is the
history of the decline from Florence and Nuremberg to London and New
York. As the power of the state grows the energy of the spirit
dwindles; and if ever Allison's ideal should be realized, if ever the
activity of the state should extend through and through to every
department of life, the universal ease and comfort which may thus be
disseminated throughout society will have been purchased dearly at the
price of the soul. The denizens of that city will be fed, housed and
clothed to perfection; only--and it is a serious drawback--only they
will be dead.

"Oh!" he broke out, "if I could but get you to see that this whole
order under which you live is artificial and unnecessary! But we are
befogged by the systems we impose upon our imagination and call
science. We have been taught to regard history as a necessary process,
until we come to think it must also be a good one; that all that has
ever happened ought to have happened just so and no otherwise. And
thus we justify everything past and present, however palpably in
contradiction with our own intuitions. But these are mere figments of
the brain. History, for the most part, believe me, is one gigantic
error and crime. It ought to have been other than it was; and we ought
to be other than we are. There is no natural and inevitable evolution
towards good; no co-operating with the universe, other than by
connivance at its crimes. That little house the brain builds to
shelter its own weakness must be torn down if we would face the truth
and pursue the good. Then we shall see amid what blinding storms of
wind and rain, what darkness of elements hostile or indifferent, our
road lies across the mountains towards the city of our desire. Then
and then only shall we understand the spirit of revolution. That there
are things so bad that they can only be burnt up by fire; that there
are obstructions so immense that they can only be exploded by dynamite;
that the work of destruction is a necessary preliminary to the work of
creation, for it is the destruction of the prison walls wherein the
spirit is confined; and that in that work the spirit itself is the only
agent, unhelped by powers of nature or powers of a world beyond--that
is the creed--no, I will not say the creed, that is the insight and
vision by which we of the Revolution live. By that I believe we shall
triumph. But whether