intellectual brilliancy
of thinkers who had flooded a nation with new ideas, who had kindled
the fires of justice, who had spoken in the _ear of all the people_
the doctrine of the essential brotherhood of man, the kinship of the
throne and the shop, the idler in the palace and the idler in the
cellar; the cormorant who dined off the labor of others at Lucerne,
and the low-browed outcasts occupied in the same way but pursuing
different methods, in the social sewer. And he would have noticed an
unusual activity in this working world; secret meetings were being
held on every hand. The great philosophical works of Rousseau
breathing a new hope and a larger life into the soul of every reader,
and the withering satire of Voltaire falling against the battlements
of the church and the throne--these were the text-books and watchword
of the new revolution. Tens of thousands of men who a few years before
had accepted unquestioningly the assurance of the priests and obeyed
as children the decrees of Royalty, were now thinking as never before
on justice and equity, were students and intelligent expounders of the
master brains which blossomed forth on every hand, in spite of priest
and police. Heresy and liberty, justice and freedom, progress and
equity had joined hands; conventionalism was doomed. The cry for
justice went up from every hand to the crown and the aristocracy, only
to come back with a mocking laugh or a royal restrictive decree. Thus
the flame was fanned. The noble teaching of the great apostles of
light and justice which illuminated the brains of the people and at
first filled their hearts with holy love and wonderful tenderness,
making them ready to accept and only desirous of receiving that
measure of justice and consideration to which they knew they were
entitled, later changed to feelings of hate and desire for revenge
which ever grows as mushrooms in the average mind when justice is
denied and oppression bears down more relentlessly at each complaint
that comes from the oppressed. It is a law of life on the lower plane
that selfishness, indifference, and heartlessness coming from above
are photographed upon the sensitive intellect of the struggling minds
below, which vainly ask for justice, only to return in time
intensified a hundred-fold--selfishness becomes active and is
complemented by an insane desire to destroy. Indifference calls forth
unbridled ferocity. Heartlessness awakens sentiments of cruelty and
br