if man were incapable of grasping the whole of human misery;
he dreads to see the extent of the evil, and in order not to be
overwhelmed by it, he fixes on some one point, where he localises all
the trouble, and will see nothing further. All this is human nature,
and easy enough to understand, my friends; but we should have more
courage, and acknowledge the truth that the evil is everywhere; among
ourselves, as well as with the enemy. You have found this out little
by little in our own country, and seeing the tares in the wheat, you
want to throw yourselves against your governments with the same fury
that made you see incarnate evil in the person of the enemy. But if
ever you recognise that the tares are in you also, then you may turn
on yourselves in utter despair. Is not this much to be feared, after
the revolutions we have seen, where those who came to bring justice
found themselves, without knowing why, with soiled hands and hearts?
You are like big children. When will you cease to insist on the
absolute good?"

They might have replied that you must will the absolute, in order to
arrive at the real; the mind can dally with shades of meaning, which
are impossible to action, where it must be all or nothing. Clerambault
had the choice between them and their adversaries; there was no other.

Yes, he knew it well enough; there was no other choice in the field of
action, where all is determined in advance. Just as the unjust victory
leads inevitably to the revenge which in its turn will be unjust, so
capitalistic oppression will provoke the proletarian revolution, which
will follow the bad example and oppress, when it has the power--an
endless chain. Here is a stern Greek justice which the mind can accept
and even honour as the rule of the universe. But the heart cannot
submit, cannot accept it. Its mission is to break the law of universal
warfare. Can it ever come to pass? Who can tell! But in any case it is
clear that the hopes and wishes of the heart are outside the order
of nature; her mission is rather above nature, and in its essence
_religious_.

Clerambault, who was filled with this spirit, did not as yet dare to
avow it; or at least he did not venture to use the word "religious,"
that word which the religions, that have so little of its spirit, have
discredited in the eyes of today.

If Clerambault himself could not see clearly into his own thought, it
was hardly to be expected that his young friends sh