MR. Z. Yes. It has to do with your definition that peaceful politics is a symptom of progress.

It brought to my mind the words of a character in Tourguenev's Smoke, that "progress is a symptom." I don't know what that character meant exactly, but the literal meaning of these words is perfectly true. Progress is certainly a symptom. POLITICIAN. A symptom of what? MR. Z. "It is a pleasure to talk with clever people." That is just the question to which I have been leading. I believe that progress a visible and accelerated progress is always a symptom of the end. POLITICIAN . []And, to begin with, encouraged by your praise,I will again put you that simple question of mine which seemed to you so clever. You say, "a symptom of the end." The end of what, I ask you? MR. Z. Naturally the end of what we have been talking about. As you remember, we have been discussing the history of mankind, and that historical "process" which has doubtless been going on at an ever-increasing rate, and which I am certain is nearing its end.

"Of all the stars that rise on the mental horizon of a man who carefully reads our Sacred Books, I think there is none so clear, illuminating, and startling as that shining in the words, "Thinkest thou that I come to bring peace on Earth? I come not to bring peace, but a sword." He came to bring truth to the earth, and truth, like good, before everything else divides." "In any case it is beyond doubt that the Anti-Christianity which, according to the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testaments, marks the closing scene of the tragedy of history, will be not a mere infidelity to or a denial of Christianity, or materialism or anything similar to it, but that it will be a religious imposture, when the name of Christ will be arrogated by such forces in mankind which are in practice and in their very essence alien, and even inimical, to Christ and His Spirit."