The Four Scourges

The Four
Scourges
Lanza del Vasto
T HE F OUR S COURGES
c 2002. Arche de Lanza del Vasto

Translated from the French
Les Quatre Flaux
by Jean Sidgwick
in collaboration with the author.
Published with the help of LATEX 2 on Debian GNU/Linux.

Permission is here given to copy and distribute this document
for any non commercial use.
For all information,
see http://www.lanzadelvasto.org/.
Table of Contents
I.
T HE E VIL
IN THE
G AME
13
I. Genesis of the Scourges and their Apocalypse
15
1.
The Four Man-Made Scourges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16
2.
Reformers and Preachers of Morals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16
3.
The Wrath of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17
4.
Original Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17
5.
Pleasure and Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
6.
Sin and Civilisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
7.
Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
8.
Drink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
9.
Sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
20
10.
Convenience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
20
11.
The Pleasure of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
20
12.
Clothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21
13.
Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22
14.
Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23
15.
The Wisdom of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24
16.
The Wisdom of Arts and Crafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
25
17.
Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
25
18.
Vulgarization or Profanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
26
19.
The Sacrilege of the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
27
20.
The Beast that rose up out of the Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28
21.
The Truth of Modern Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29
22.
Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29
23.
Worship of the Beast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30
24.
The Second Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31
25.
The Beast that rose up out of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31
26.
The Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
32
27.
The State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
33
28.
The number six hundred and sixty-six . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
34
II. The Devil takes a Hand in the Game
37
1.
The Spirit of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
38
2.
The Innocence of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
38
3.
Romping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
39
4.
Figurative Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
39
5.
Of Regulated Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
40
6.
Games of Chance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
40
7.
Of Play and Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
41
8.
Of Play and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
41
9.
The Game of Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
43
10.
Of Play and Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
43
11.
Noon at two oclock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
46
12.
The Money Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
47
13.
Games of Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
47
14.
Of Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
47
15.
Of Degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
49
16.
Of Colonial Degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
50
17.
Of the Most Sacrilegious of Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
51
18.
Of the Degradation of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
53
19.
Of Mechanized Industry, another great game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
53
20.
Of Degradation by Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
54
21.
Of the Degradation by Leisure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
54
22.
Of the Great Wrath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
55
23.
The Devils Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
55
24.
Of the Game of Evil and Nothingness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
55
25.
A Complementary Note on Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
56
26.
Horror and Contempt of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
59
27.
The Part of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
60
III.Possession and the Possessed

1.
61
How the Knowledge of Good and Evil engenders Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4
62
2.
How Possession engenders Want . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
62
3.
Why a Good is called a Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
63
4.
The Malice of Wealth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
63
5.
The Wretchedness of the Rich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
64
6.
How Possession engenders War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
67
7.
From Possession which is Power or Sovereignty to Possession which is Enjoyment . .
68
8.
Confusing oneself with the thing possessed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
70
9.
The Resulting Exaltation and Disappointment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
70
10.
The Bloody Consequences of the Confusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
71
11.
What may be expected of the People and its will for Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
71
12.
Possession, a Vice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
72
13.
War between rich nations and poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
73
14.
How Possession engenders Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
73
15.
The Fraudulous Bankruptcy of Patrons and Philanthropists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
74
16.
Wealth, or Idleness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
75
17.
Wealth and Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
76
18.
Three Reasons for the Divorce of Wealth from Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
76
19.
Three, seven and nine lucky men; three poor and three unlucky men . . . . . . . . . .
77
20.
Marxs Capital, and Value as Work incorporated in objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
21.
A remark that brings the whole thing tumbling down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
79
22.
An average worker multiplied by n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
23.
Value as a Category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
24.
Value the Power of Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
81
25.
A Phantom Worker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
81
26.
The Six Factors of Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
81
27.
Ten Personages in Quest of Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
82
28.
The Alienation of the Worker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
83
29.
The Honesty of Liberal and Bourgeois Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
84
30.
The Reason for Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85
31.
Scientific Economy or Moral Mystification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
87
32.
Value and Price . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
88
33.
Three Kinds of Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
88
34.
The Epic of Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
89
35.
The Mystical Character of Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
89
36.
From Infinite and Substantial Value to Monetary Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
90
37.
The Poetics of Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
91
38.
The Business World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
93
39.
The Advantage of Mutual Profit over Simple Robbery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
94
40.
Friendly Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
96
41.
The Law watches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
96
42.
The Three States of Economic Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
96
43.
Money in its gaseous state and the evolution of miserliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
98
44.
The Philosophy of Finance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
45.
The Neutrality of Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
46.
Political Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
47.
The Degradation of Morality into Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
48.
The Lapse from Religion into Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
49.
The Lapse into Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
50.
The Master Word of the Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
51.
Where are the Christians? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
52.
Materialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
53.
Materialists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
54.
The Strength and Weakness of Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
55.
Good-natured in Misfortune, ill-natured in Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
56.
Matter and Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
57.
The Materialistic Doctrine of Salvation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
58.
Dialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
59.
Metaphysical Crimes and Punishments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
60.
Class Struggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
61.
The Proletariat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
62.
Negative Hopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
63.
Four Mistakes concerning a Lack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
64.
The Unauthentic Character of the Proletariat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
65.
The Proletariat and the People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
66.
Dictatorship or Abolition of the State? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
67.
The Reinforcement of Power and new Division . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
68.
The Fearful Reverse Side of Dispossession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
69.
Possession and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

6
II.
T HE W HEEL
OF THE
R EVOLUTIONS
121
I. Power and Justice
123
1.
The Wheel of Revolution and the Revolution of the Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
2.
Definition of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
3.
Power and Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.
The Ground Floor of the Heathen Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.
Unity and Unequality of the Tribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.
The Tribe and the Scourges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
7.
A Blessing on the Tribes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
8.
The Limits of the Tribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
9.
Kingdoms: their Birth and Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
10.
The Holy Clusters of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
11.
The Hand of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
12.
The Illusions of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
13.
The King, Right, the Straight Line and the Ray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
14.
The Magic of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
15.
Of Kings and Gods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
16.
Of Science and Sin in Myth and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
17.
Of Royal Priesthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
18.
The Rejection of Priesthood and the ensuing progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
19.
The Two Swords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
20.
Consecration and its Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
21.
Kingdom and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
22.
The Superstition of Blood and the ensuing crimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
23.
Royal Alliances and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
24.
The Reign of the Bramble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
25.
The Reign of Nullity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
26.
Of Naked Royalty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
27.
Of Voluntary Bondage (La Botie) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
28.
Bondage, an ill fortune and an ill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
29.
The Attempt to avoid Bondage or the Foundation of Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
30.
The Play of Freedom and Power, or Perpetual Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
31.
A Third Thing, of which one must not speak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
32.
Concerning two Rabbits and the Tightness of the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

7
33.
Contrasts and Contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
34.
The Reverse of Civil Freedom: Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
35.
Bondage among Free Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
36.
Origin, Nature and Growth of the Plebs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
37.
The Nature and Cause of Patrician Resistance and its Motive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
38.
The Degrees of Bondage in the Noble House.

The Subjection of Sons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
39.
The Subjection of Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
40.
The Subjection of the Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
41.
The Soldier, the Whore and the Wage-earner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
42.
The Prisoner, the Convict and the Madman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
43.
A Chain and a Whip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
44.
Freedom within the Law according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
45.
The Negative Aspect of Civil Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
46.
The Fictional Aspect of Civil Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
47.
The Total Gift or Sacrifice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
48.
A Great Find: profitable sacrifice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
49.
Contract: an advantageous exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
50.
The Ambiguous Nature of Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
51.
Fear and the Lure of Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
52.
Esprit de Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
53.
Of Counterlove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
54.
Passionate Love of Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
55.
The Hypocritical Pride of Esprit de Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
56.
The Systematic Ferocity of Esprit de Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
57.
The Bestial Nature of Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
58.
The Idols of Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
59.
Perverted Paganism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
60.
The Four Possible Sovereignties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
61.
The Purification of Esprit de Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
62.
A Perverted Mystical Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
63.
The Game of Equality and Liberty, or the social scrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
64.
The Social Scrum mechanized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
65.
The Game of Licence and Necessity, or Decadence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
66.
The Mechanical Laws of Conquest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

8
67.
The End of the Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
68.
The City and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
69.
The Nature of Tyranny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
70.
The Time of the Tyrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
71.
The Coup dEtat, theme and variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
72.
Connivance between the Tyrant and the People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
73.
Orgies and Licence of the Tyrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
74.
Tyrannys Loss of Savour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
75.
Dictatorship and Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
76.
The Four Regimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
77.
The Force of Law and the Law of Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
78.
The Mechanics of Tyranny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
79.
Ills and Remedies of all Regimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
80.
Regimes and Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
81.
Courageous and Circumspect Acceptance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
82.
The Wheel comes full Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
83.
Concerning the Laws and Fatality of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
II. Fatality, or Deliverance?
193
1.
The Two Blocs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
2.
The Similarity of Opposites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
3.
Violence and Lying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
4.
Irreligion and Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5.
Hypocrisy and Cynicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
6.
Father and Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
7.
Upmanship in Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
8.
The Three Democratic Graces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
9.
The Dialectics of History or the Chain of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
10.
The Interpenetration of Enmity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
11.
The Inability to be One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
12.
An Unnoticed Relapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
13.
Doctrine and Faith, No. Cunning and Power, Yes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
14.
Rivalry
15.
The Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
16.
The Confluences of Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
17.
The Outcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
18.
Fatality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
19.
Experimental Proof of Destiny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
20.
The Logic and Mechanics of Fatality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
21.
The Origins of Western Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
22.
Fatality and Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
23.
The Damnation of the Hero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
24.
Definition of the White Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
25.
Conversion and Return . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
26.
The Kingdom of Heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
27.
Hell on Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
28.
God Forsworn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
29.
The Work of Disintegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
30.
The Reward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
31.
To Die Three times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
32.
Dubious Whiteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
33.
Gods Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
34.
The Simile of the Fig-tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
35.
Two Cosmic Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
36.
The Discovery of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
37.
Modern Science and Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
38.
The Novelty of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
39.
The Antiquity of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
40.
The Pure Hero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
41.
The Victim and Impure Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
42.
Honour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
43.
The Heros Mistake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
44.
The Fall of the Angel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
45.
Extreme Ignominy and the Return of the Hero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
46.
Three Historical Miracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
47.
A National Liberation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
48.
Satyagraha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
49.
A Social Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
50.
Revolutionary Originality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
51.
A Revolution Contrary to All Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

10
52.
His Supreme Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
53.
The Force of Justice or Nonviolence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
54.
Justice, or Reason Enacted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
55.
The Two Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
56.
Simple Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
57.
The Great Unnoticed Scandal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
58.
The Handling of the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
59.
Beware of Virtue! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
60.
The Knowledge of Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
61.
A Lesson in Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
62.
The Complement of the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
63.
Justice and War or the Crime of Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
64.
The Sting of Death is Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
65.
An Act of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
66.
An Act of Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
67.
The Target of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
68.
The Touchstone of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
69.
Love of the Enemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
70.
Non-violence, Love and Charity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
71.
Charity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
72.
Love and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
73.
The Rule of Non-violent Tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
74.
Risks and Dangers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
75.
A Fine Piece of Impudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
76.
Non-violence Mistaken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
77.
Misuse of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
78.
Detestable Modesty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
79.
The Capacity of Europeans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
80.
The Capacity of the Military . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
81.
The Charter of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
82.
Non-violence, the Weapon of the Martyrs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
83.
Attila faced with the Lions and Wolves of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
84.
Non-violence, Foundation of the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
85.
Among the Saints and in Sects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
86.
The Revolutionary Non-violence of the Nineteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

11
87.
The Emperor of Hungary in Check,

A Funereal Rebellion and the Christ of the Andes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
88.
The Present and the Future of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
89.
The First Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
90.
Secret Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
91.
Private Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
92.
Public Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
93.
The two Hearts of Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
94.
The Ark or the Gandhians of the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
95.
Elements of a Nonviolent Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
96.
Elements of a Nonviolent Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
97.
Elements of a Nonviolent Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
98.
Relations of the Order with the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
99.
The four Feast Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
100. Elements of Religious Reconciliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

101. Elements of Political Reconciliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
102. The Sevenfold Vow of the Companions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
12
I.
T HE E VIL
IN THE
13
G AME
I.
Genesis of the Scourges

and their Apocalypse
Which say to the seers, See not;

and to the prophets,
Prophesy not unto us right things,
prophesy deceits. . .
Isaiah XXX, 10
15
1. The Four Man-Made Scourges

Want, slavery, war and sedition: the four scourges of mans cities and kingdoms since time began.
Passive, the first two. Active, the two others.
Passive, the first two, because they are undergone, not enacted. They are states of things but not
events; chronic evil, endemic in every epoch and every regime; the price, it seems, that must be paid for
every civilisation.
Active, the other two, because they are prepared, premeditated and conducted; different, however,
from voluntary acts because of their ineluctable and seemingly fatal character.
The fact is that people go into war and revolution because they have undergone want and slavery.
The latter two scourges spring from the first two, turn into them again and aggravate them.
2. Reformers and Preachers of Morals

There are two opposed camps of thought concerning the scourges. On the one hand, there are
the reformers, for whom the whole trouble originates in a wrong arrangement of society and economy.
They maintain that by a change of system, everyone can be assured of everlasting abundance, freedom,
peace and justice. On the other hand, the preachers of morals affirm that all our evils result from our
wickedness and vices and that changing the system will not enable us to elude the punishment we
deserve.
Now it is certain that to change the regime and improve the law without changing men for the better
is like sweeping a room without opening a window. The dust raised (or at least what dust you have not
swallowed) will settle again where it rose.
It is also certain that if men were wholly good, the worst of systems, slavery, for example, would
harm no-one. If the master were wise and good, the slave devoted and loving, whom would slavery
harm?
On the contrary, if a regime which is excellent because it takes dignity and conscience for granted is
applied to peoples who have no dignity and no conscience, it becomes the source of infinite disorder and
proves to be the most suitable for spreading mischief far and wide. Reformers are therefore deceiving
themselves if they think that they have found an expedient for saving the world. Which does not prove
that the preachers of morality are right or that they know the remedy.
There can be no doubt that if men were entirely devoid of virtue and incapable of loyalty, courage
or perseverance, they would be as safe from the two active scourges as, for their great and lasting
happiness, monkeys are.
16
To explain social catastrophe by the immorality of men is to attribute the cause of the tide to the gale
that swells the sea. Sins do indeed create innumerable troubles, just as waves make the tide fearsome,
but that upheaval of a great mass of water called the tide is of quite another nature and has other causes.
3. The Wrath of God

Universal tradition reveals and repeats that the scourges are the result of the wrath of God. In
truth, we shall never find any meaning in these periodical phenomena or gain any benefit from their
formidable lesson if, over a self-justifying and self-glorifying world, we cannot read the sign and hear
the growl of lasting disapproval.
But beware! the disapproval stems from the righteousness of God, immeasurably beyond the scope
of our moral judgement.
And this is where it must be pointed out that there is wrongdoing which morality does not condemn
and in which good and bad alike outdo each other, wrongdoing accepted and approved by all, and by
which all profit confusedly. It is in perfect accord with logic and in all justice that the four scourges
come as if by chance to confound all men with Chastisement.
Morality cannot cry out against such wrongdoing since it is the very mainspring of civilisation,
whereas morality is simply the reflection in mans conscience of the civilisation he deliberately upholds.
Religion can alone account for this kind of evil which is the stuff of custom and law and troubles mans
conscience only now and then and confusedly because he is too completely wrapped up in it to see it.
Religion calls this kind of wrongdoing by its name, which is Sin.
Nevertheless, religion distinguishes from every moral fault the universal, impersonal and fundamental Sin which it qualifies as Original, and it presents this profound truth in a story which the
Tremendously Intelligent with one accord class as naive and a fable.
4. Original Sin
The scriptures teach that Adams sin was the evil of eating of the fruit of the Knowledge-of-Goodand-Evil. It would be simple-minded to find this strange algebraic formula clear. The evil was to eat
the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, an equation in which the unknown quantity is represented
on each side of the equal sign. On one side, the unknown quantity stands alone: The evil was. . . (X =
. . . ). On the other, it is combined with several premises from which deductions must be made to solve
the equation and reveal the evil.
To eat = to take and degrade in order to reduce to oneself, to incorporate.
Fruit = possession and profit.
Therefore the Sin is to have grabbed and degraded Knowledge for possession and profit.
Knowledge Adam possessed in its green, living plenitude a tree in the midst of his garden. And
God did not forbid him to look at the tree or to seat himself in its shade. But the Tree of Knowledge,
raised like a ladder towards heaven, was made for contemplation and worship, was made for the eyes
and not for the teeth. The fruit should not have been torn from it, bitten into and mangled for the use of
the belly.1
1
The spiritual consequences of original sin are dealt with in Approches de la Vie Intrieure (Introduction to Inner Life)
and La Monte des Ames Vivantes (The Rise of Living Souls), a commentary on Genesis.
17
5. Pleasure and Pain

Good and Evil present themselves in their raw, living relationship as Pleasure and Pain. Pleasure,
to urge life on according to its need, so that it may have more life; Pain, to arrest it on the deadly slopes.
Man alone has turned pleasure and pain into a science, an art and a calculation. He alone, offending
Nature and biting the fruit, brings about pleasure beyond the limits of his need, even to the detriment of
life, and does his utmost to elude pain, to the point of falsifying its defensive signals and preventing its
salutory recurrence.
The pursuit of pleasure and the flight from pain are even the main reason for the existence of
civilisations with their luxury and their delicacy, their frivolity and their agitation, their sciences and
their law. The sons of Adam and Cain have founded cities in order to settle and wall themselves
into this Sin about which morality has nothing to say.
6. Sin and Civilisation

The Knowledge of good and evil, speculation on the pleasant, the science of the useful, the subversion of intelligence, its deviation from truth to convenience, such is the Sin into which we are all born.
We are reared and educated in it, train ourselves honestly in it and excel in it as gods knowing good
and evil according to the serpents promise. And the counter-nature thus created, spontaneous artifice,
deliberate delusion, indispensable excess, is called civilisation.
Man, it is said, is composed of a body and a soul, which suffices to define him such as God made
him. Body and soul oppose each other, they say, by way of explaining his virtues and vices.
But between the natural and spiritual planes, a third makes its appearance: the plane of the artificial.
Because it is founded on nothing, let it not be considered unworthy of consideration. For it is there,
suspended in his error and vanity, such as he has made himself since the fall, that man almost entirely
exists. The Artificial is the stage on which the human comedy and the drama of history is enacted. It is
the site on which Babel and Paris, New York and Moscow are built.
This third nature, in itself empty, draws its substance from the other two and develops at their
expense. By the search for pleasure beyond all reason and beyond organic measure, it manufactures a
more exacting and active animality to the detriment of the bodys health. Meanwhile, by intellectual
curiosity and the pursuit of success, by the exaltation of feeling in pursuit of happiness, it invents a
spirituality to the detriment of the souls salvation.
Nature elaborated and denatured, spirit degraded and systematized amalgamate on this third plane
where they no longer contrast, and, with the help of education, practice and habit, end up by getting
along with each other.
This plane is neither on earth nor in heaven. It is the stage of convention, just a few steps above the
ground, on which we play our part in the world of personages. It is our life in the city where we gratify
more or less unreal desire and feel more or less imaginary satisfaction and woe.
The personage, with the name, place and function that define him, and the clothes that denote his
social dignity and cover the body he has put into shame and into the shade (where he secretly stuffs and
spoils it) the personage, with his acquired culture and manners, and his vanity even more active than
his appetites, is thus formed in sin, perpetually wronging nature and in false posture before God.
When Rousseau affirms that man is naturally good, but that civilisation has perverted him, he
is usually reproached with ignoring original sin. But this is to ignore the link between civilisation
18
and that Sin, a link which Rousseau himself certainly did not perceive. When this link has been reestablished, his statement, with a little retouching, can be integrated into traditional doctrine, provided
that by naturally good we mean that he was good so long as he remained such as God made him,
good insofar as God made him in His image and likeness, and that he has become perverted to the
degree in which he has made himself like a god and fashonied a paradise of his own outside earth and
heaven, and in it builds towers to defy the heavens. And his works are presided by the Prince of This
World, the same who offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth, saying I have power over all things
and give them to whom I will. And Jesus says of this world, it hateth me because I testify of its works
that they are evil.
But to return to nature is not so easy as Jean-Jacques ingenuous disciples think. Just to leave the
city is not enough. For generations of work have gone into making us thoroughly unnatural, which
cannot be undone in a day by an external process or without supernatural help.
7. Food
Alone of all animals, a man exposed on the face of the earth can find no food there. The grasses,
acorns, seeds and roots with which other living creatures content themselves to him are so many brambles and thorns.
It is the sentence that weighs on the descendants of Adam. They have been sentenced to inability
not to eat too well, a ridiculous punishment, yet one that causes them fatigue and constraint, danger and
catastrophe beyond reckoning.
However, it is not his inner bodily structure that make man different from other animals, but his
mental disposition, the immense curiosity of his taste forever in quest of new and rare things, which
renders the common things at hand disgusting to him and in the end, harmful.
By applying the knowledge of good and evil to the most natural of needs, he first widened that need
to a great gulf, all the more to enjoy fulfilling it. He then perverted, stimulated and pampered it until it
became enfeebled by organic fatigue.
The worldwide custom of eating only cooked, salted and seasoned food has made the most natural
of needs dependent on artifice and, except when a treatment for illness, has turned it into a vice. Habit
makes the pleasant abuse an enslaving necessity and a sickness that requires to be nursed.
But the earth cannot yield food in such variety and quantity without being forced. So man forces
her in the sweat of his brow and is condemned to hard labour from generation to generation. Now, work
requires method, calculation, invention and learning. Therefore divine intelligence is harnessed to the
task of multiplying obscure, base, frequently repeated pleasure, and that is how knowledge and its fruit
are eaten.
8. Drink
But there is an even more elementary need of which man has made a monstrous caprice, and that
is thirst. His cunning here is much more remarkable, since he has contrived to make waters of fire that
excite thirst instead of quenching it.
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9. Sleep
Sleep is a need which needs only itself to be satisfied. A tired animal lies down on the ground
and falls asleep. But what would be the use of being so clever if we could not find a way, if not of
adding to sleep, at least of exerting ourselves around it? For this purpose we have had to produce that
astonishing apparatus with springs called a bed, as well as the room that guards it, stuffed with furniture
and curtains, with its thick walls, its doors with locks, its glass-paned windows, its shutters to protect
us from rain, wind, animals and thieves. Thus, by a trick of the intelligence, we manage to make our
rest cost us almost as much fatigue as our pleasures cost us trouble.
10.
Convenience
While we attach to sleep all the conveniences and softness in which our sloth wallows, this is
nothing compared with the whirlwind we are finally caught up in because of our care to save ourselves
fatigue. For in order to avoid a few light tasks such as lighting a lamp or a fire, or going from place to
place or from one floor to another on foot, it is obvious that thousands of men must sweat and toil at the
bottom of mines or in factories amid hellish noise and smoke. The slight relief afforded us is therefore
only a shifting of the formidable load, a shift that knocks the scales of justice off balance and will bring
the wrath of Heaven upon us.
So true is it that the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil into which we have bitten makes us seek good
to find evil.
11.
The Pleasure of Love
Without doubt it is concerning the act of love and procreation that the curiosity of good and evil
has let itself go to the most interesting elaborations, to the extent of doing not only everything, but also
the contrary of everything.
Male and female created He them, and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. The work of
the flesh is therefore His will. And his kindness wills that it should be accompanied by beauty, joy and
plenitude, as the whole of nature testifies each Spring.
Man, however, cannot follow nature in this, not because of Original Sin, but since before it, by
virtue of his dignity as a conscious child of God. For the nature of nature is profane, whereas the nature
of man is religious.
Wonder at the act of love and procreation is one of the two sources of religion, the other being
stupefaction at the discovery of death.
At the instant when the spark of procreation flashes through him, man feels himself transported by
a power he feels but has no knowledge of, a power he recognises as a mystery.
Therefore, he has no right to the act of love and procreation unless its motive is love, its purpose,
to beget, its condition, religious consecration.
To seek ones own enjoyment in the carnal act instead of spending oneself in it for the joy of union
and to go beyond ones own life is indeed biting the fruit and stealing the gift.
Now, it is because pure pleasure (purely animal pleasure) is neither permissible nor possible to
him that man turns toward lechery. For his knowledge, capable of conferring on love the fullness of its
20
meaning, which is marriage and sacrament, gives him, in keeping with the logic of his fall, the means
to elude loves solemn bonds and also to elude, as a troublesome accident, the fecundity which is never
exempt from grave anxiety and sorrow. Thus it urges him to the pursuit of pleasure while enabling him
at the same time, if his means suffice, to elude fatigue and disgust.
But bodily orgasm being what it is, intense and disappointing, and lasting what it lasts, the space
of an instant, it can be augmented only by dreaming and stage-setting. Hence the rich furnishings and
decoration of drawing-room and garden, table and couch; hence jewelry and dress, perfume and song,
dancing and feasts and travel. Worldly fatuity, insolent jubilation over fashionable scandal, the thrills
of risk and intrigue may be added to these to make an imaginary stir in the emptiness.
This is where the wealth of nations melts away, the superfluous wealth that seems to be the fine
flower and peak of their achievement. Here civic virtue, family structure and religious faith turn to
water. While it is true that the imagination of erotic pleasure gives rise to some social evils such as
prostitution and the abandoning of children to state institutions, it is also the source of the brillance of
civilisations whose glory, like the waters of a fountain, is in their dying fall.
12.
Clothing
One of the most remarkable results of Knowledge is the necessity for dress. Having become
one of mans needs, as primordial as his need for food, dress exacts from him almost as much work
and worry. Morality makes it a duty for us to be clothed, whereas the Bible reveals it to be the first
consequence of Original Sin, even before Gods sentence.
On the other hand, comon sense invites us to relate the use of clothing to the protection of the
body from cold, dirt, sun and irritating contact. But with what admirable patience do we obtain and
endure the opposite result! For clothes make heat more trying and cold more dangerous. By retaining
the bodys sweat and impurity, they aggravate uncleanliness. By softening skin, bristle and callosity,
they afflict it with the sensitivity of raw flesh, make it vulnerable and expose it to illness. It is precisely
because clothing has created the weakness it provides against that it so often seems necessary. It is just
as unhealthy for the human body always to be clothed as for a plant to grow in a cellar.
So the rational explanation of the phenomenon turns out to be childish.
The Bible gives the true reason when, on the subject of Adams and Eves aprons of fig-leaves, it
makes no mention of the weather, but speaks of shame.
Yes, shame and respect of sex, born at the same time of the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil,
because that knowledge agitates the soul with the for and against of contradiction. So now, faced with
the signs of sex, it is forever troubled and hesitates between delight and disgust, between stupefaction
and laughter, and no longer knows whether it adores or execrates.
And indeed, what is the reason for this organ with a double purpose, made to give life, whence its
attraction; made to execrete filth, whence the repugnance it causes?
Clothing gets rid of the opposition by hiding the organ. It turns the impure object into a sacred one
and makes possible the universal, silent worship named modesty.
Common morality claims that the purpose of clothing is to moderate desire by removing the object
of desire from sight. The fact is that clothing removes the mean and repulsive aspect of the object in
order to heighten its prestige and mystery beyond all proportion. It hides it from sight so as to present
it magnified to the imagination and thereby drive it into the heart and the blood. Among the civilised,
clothing is indeed the most powerful instrument of seduction. Beyond all doubt, it is what makes man
21
an animal, intemperate in all seasons and the only fundamentally vicious one.
But the hide-and-seek of desire and disgust is not the only game in which dress plays an indispensable part. It is just as indispensable in the play-acting of modesty and conceit which is nothing other
than civility itself.
Dress belongs to the third plane, that of the Artificial, of which it is an essential element. Although
it answers no bodily need, it is, on the other hand, so necessary to the personage that without it, there is
no personage possible, for without costume or stage-setting there can be no theatre.
The need that dress fulfills is to represent. The need is that of the personage who cannot exist until
he has hidden the nudity of his nothingness, and shown what he sets up to be. That is how he satisfies
the void that makes do for his soul and which, for that reason, is called vanity.
By hiding away the belly and its foul-smelling functions, clothing gratifies the person with the
appearance of an angel or a statue and thus displays its foremost pretension while apparently realizing
the serpents false promise, Ye shall be as gods..
It perches the person in his place on the social ladder and dictates the attitudes and responses of the
actors who surround him. Each, by the simple fact of representing himself clothed announces his titles,
honours and rights and celebrates the part of authority with which he is invested.
Dress is the net society casts over all flesh in order to assume and consume it, in order to bag it.
This explains the umbrageous, harassing severity with which people pursue the slightest eccentricity of
dress without any need for a code, policeman or lawcourt, seeing that every citizen not only appoints
himself judge in these matters but also carries out the sentence. The punishment he inflicts may be
laughter and jeering or stoning the culprit to death.
Dress is always a livery, a mark and instrument of slavery, yet not once in history have people
revolted against it, and not once will they ever seek to be freed,2 for everywhere their slavery is voluntary
or unconscious, which only makes it all the more binding and oppressive. Indeed, dress is worn not just
on the skin: it implies certain manners, certain behaviour, a certain language, certain reactions and
certain prejudices, certain personal opinions, certain habits that have become second nature, and
by these it wins complete possession of man, who ends up by forgetting his own soul and even his body
and emptying all his substance into his mask. And when man is alienated to the point of mistaking his
person for himself, the Prince of This World holds the strings and in his parades and battles, manoeuvres
him at will.
13.
Work
It is Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil that has turned mans work into chastisement. In the divine
order of things, this is not so. Work is no more chastisement than knowledge is sin, but he should not
have eaten the fruit.
Work was instituted in the joy of paradise, God having given man a garden ut operaret (Gen.1).
So that he might till and tend it and by his work take part in Creation, which is the strongest joy of love.
And this work of Adams was done in harmony and peace as a gift of charity towards the earth and an
offering to heaven. In the midst of the garden, he nursed the Tree of Knowledge to make it blossom and
mingle its branches with those of the Tree of Life. And Adam, in marvelling awe, watched it rise like a
2
Exception must be made for the sect of the Turlupins in the Middle Ages (who came to a tragic end), also for a Russian
sect, the Doukhobors who emigrated to Canada. The Magda Shivaites live naked in the forests of India and sometimes come
down into the towns.
22
hymn.
But by plucking and biting the fruit, by eating it in order to seize Knowledge for himself and
grow, he not only severed the fruit from the tree but severed himself from the rest of creation, violating
divine order. By separating, he diminished himself. By taking into this diminished self Knowledge
too great for him, he lost his native balance and toppled into anxiety and restlessness. Anxiety and
restlessness bred that multiplication of needs, coveteousness, curiosity and vanity which enslave him in
tasks without number or end. And that is how he has managed to make work his punishment and his
chain.
Artists alone have preserved some memory of Adams work before the fall. They cultivate the
garden of perception for its own sake and for the joy of giving, doing no harm to any creature whatever,
obedient to the laws of nature and spiritual inspiration. The sentence falls on all other workers insofar
as they turn towards the useful at the expense of beauty.
Knowledge in Paradise was the living knowledge of the One. Adam, by snatching the Fruit from
the Tree, made knowledge separate and double: Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil, of True and False, of
Beautiful and Ugly, of Subject and Object, knowledge that is external and made up of opposition.
In the same way, his work has become a work of separation and opposition. The most separate
of all beings, the one that wants to grab everything, eat everything, taste everything, poke and pry into
everything, skin everything, domineer over everything and know everything, is in consequence selfcondemned to hard, thankless and violent toil, toil that consists in turning the tender-leaved tree into a
wooden post, deep forest into a ploughed field, leaping and flying creatures into meat. Tearing, splitting,
twisting, beating, boring, pegging, forcing, denaturing, shelling, dessicating, crushing, grinding and
cooking are his work now.
Whether it be the ploughmans coulter, the butchers knife, the woodcutters axe, the blacksmiths
hammer or the soldiers sword, a tool and a weapon are of the same metal. War is work of a kind and
useful work is war waged on the whole of nature.
14.
Knowledge
Nevertheless, throughout the strange adventure, the hardship and trials into which it has led him,
Knowledge has remained mans most faithful companion, the best of all his goods and the source of all
others, his strongest strength. Knowledge has made men unite their efforts to avoid danger, overcome
obstacles, eliminate loss and increase achievement. It has armed Adam with tools and weapons, taught
him tactics and techniques, safeguarded his royalty even in exile.
That God should take back from him the Knowledge he had stolen was the very least chastisement
Adam could have expected. On the contrary, the Lord, profound and discreet in His justice, confirms
his full possession of it, saying, Here he is, become like one of us, knowing Good and Evil. And
instead of depriving him of this spark of Himself abusively obtained, He leaves him free to aggravate
the abuse at will and to experience its consequences until at last he reaches understanding or changes
his ways or destroys himself.
However muddy the usurpers soul, however questionable his work and manoeuvres, his knowledge
is in no way soiled. It keeps the purity and limitless power of a divine thing. Only its direction is wrong.
Even when harnessed to the basest task, it gives the seeker the key to the hidden order of the world and
the secret working of Gods creatures. The truth of mans discoveries is proved by the efficacity of their
results.
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15.
The Wisdom of Science
Moreover, it must be added that humanity has not in all things and without exception betrayed
Gods trust in it. There have always been men who have looked on the knowledge snatched from God
as the surest means of re-uniting us with Him.
Such were the ancient masters, wandering philosophers, solitary ascetics, priest-kings like
Melchisedek, acquainted with the major mysteries of divine essence and the destiny of the soul as
well as with the lesser mysteries of substances and causes and the cyclic revolutions called Nature or
History.
Thanks to the sages, the primordial truths of the first Revelation have been maintained in every
human tradition. Thanks to them, the link has never been broken between this world in its bond of error
and woe, and God, from whose truth it draws its being and from whom it turned away until Knowledge,
the seed of the Tree, the Logos took on flesh for the redemption of sinners.
The sense of profit being the cause of Original Sin, the wrong direction given to Knowledge, it
is necessarily the distinctive character of pure Knowledge always to steer in the opposite direction,
towards Sacrifice. What is more, it institutes Sacrifice, of which it understands the liberating virtue and
thus establishes the principle of all religions. It is the hidden kernel of the religions.
It is sacred, that is to say, detached and secret. It is a means of salvation for the world, a way out
from the exile of the world because it is totally foreign to the worlds ambition and covetousness.
Nothing could be more important, then, than to preserve Science in its purity and therefore to keep
it safe from the impure. Now, every man is impure by nature and by birth so long as he has not been
purified, prepared, separated from the common current and consecrated. That is why, at the heart of
every civilization, a responsible clergy has been set up to watch over what is most precious in man.
It is not in defence of privilege that this clergy is organized in castes of difficult access, exclusive
schools, severe orders, but to answer the need that brought it into being.
No-one could enter without having been tried, and the first trial was to prove that he was not seeking
Science in order to take from it, but in order to give himself to it entirely. No-one could enter without
adopting a strict rule of life, no-one could enter without taking vows and oaths that bound him till his
death.
As for the Knowledge to which the disciple gave his whole being, he had to take it whole. He
was not allowed to dismember Science and mutilate his own understanding by choosing one branch to
cultivate apart according to his inclination and talent. For this Knowledge is one, and living. And it
has a unique purpose: the living unity hidden under the I of the knower. But since all things possess
hidden unity, and God is unity itself, Kowledge of the Self leads to inner knowledge of all things.
This knowledge in which the knower and the known are one, works on the being it inhabits and
transforms him totally. It is not a sum of notions, but a source of virtues; it is not only a science, but
also conscience and wisdom. The man who is foreign in all things to this knowledge remains in outer
darkness, even when his intellect works to perfection, and even if he is guilty of no crime he is wholly
steeped in sin.
To accuse the priestly castes of having deliberately kept the people ignorant is to judge the conduct
of the wise foolishly indeed. They were aware from the outset that to transmit knowledge such as
they had received it to people who accepted neither its conditions nor its consequences was a sheer
impossibility. But in every measure and in every manner in which it could be received, truth gradually
spread, for the nature of light is to radiate.
24
And everything profound and meaningful in the ancient civilizations shows that the measure was
large and its forms beautiful. At their origin, the solemn feasts were a representation of truth to the
whole people, veiled but brilliant teaching. Family rites brought it into the privacy of the humblest
homes and implanted it in the heart of the children. Its great imagery circulated in poetry and in myth.
But it was through the medium of arts and crafts that this truth had its greatest effect on the common
man, the man of flesh and desire.
16.
The Wisdom of Arts and Crafts
Work is indeed chastisement for sin, but the reason for chastisement is purification. Work is twosided: on the one hand, to work is to seek profit and undergo the consequences of sin; on the other hand,
it is to obey the Creator and in a certain manner cooperate with Him by mastering, testing, training,
perfecting and expressing oneself, in short, serving the human family in its common need.
This is what made a craft a possible school for spiritual initiation, because of the teaching that
accompanied apprenticeship, the rules concerning behaviour in the workshop or on the site of work, the
religious rites and observance, and the vows that bound the members of the guilds one to another.
Although a craft was of inferior degree, being more than half engaged in the world, it also required
considerable knowledge and depth, particularly that craft whose name means prince of the crafts: Architecture.3
A princely craft indeed, because of the number of workmen and the diversity of creation it governs,
and also because it transmutes the useful into beauty, thought and worship. Its main task is to build
temples in the likeness of the sky in all its proportions and to transcribe the cries, tears and blood of
popular legend as well as the numbers and emblems of occult philosophy into the long-lasting language
of stone. Royal, too, because every craftsman undergoes its law, named style, when he fashions an
object whose proportions speak, whose ornamentation sings or teaches or testifies, whether that object
be a basin or a harness or a clog.
It is touching to observe that the most difficult and delicate half of human work consists in decorating (a word that means doing honour to), work which is nearly always badly paid, if paid at all. And
for what use? So that whoever rests his hands or eyes on the object will find in it an unfailing reminder
of his origin, his destiny and the road to salvation: the sun, the moon and the Cross.
17.
Magic
But an art exists by which knowledge fulfills human desires without recourse to work, and that is
Magic. Nowhere does the divine aspect of Knowledge and language appear so clearly, for the Magician,
like God, says, Let this be and the thing is. Thus he always arouses stupefaction, disquiet, envy, and
has imitators who are charlatans when they get people to believe them and madmen when they believe
in themselves. Hence the opinion, widespread today, that magic has never held sway over anything but
ignorance and credulity and that it is illusory and impossible. But this opinion is ruled out by too many
proofs of the contrary, too much testimony worthy of belief, including that of the scriptures.
The man who falls into the power of the magician loses the conduct of his life because another
mans will is projected into the heart of his being and captures the source of his conscience. The other
man plays on him as on an instrument. The magician can exercice this same power of seduction on
3
Arch means principle and prince; Techn means trade or craft.
25
animals and even if one refuses to believe the far-off legend of Orpheus, this is proved daily by the
example of the snake-charmer with his flute. Certain yogis make plants grow and spring up like a jet
of water simply by looking at them. And events and the elements can also be influenced by magic
thanks to spells, figures, numbers, rhythms and tones which are so many ciphers that correspond to the
essential form inscribed in things and which serve as keys to enter them. This is what the unknown
philosophers called Alchemists no doubt did when, breathing their vital influx into mineral bodies,
they brought about transformations in them which would have required centuries to take place in the
bowels of the earth. . .
In all heathen religions, priest and magician are more or less one and the same. That they are
distinct and even opposed in Hebraic and Christian traditions is due to a clearer notion of Original Sin.
Priest and magician handle the same powers and generally the latter does so with skill, art and efficiency that the former does not possess, but the difference between them consists in this: the Magician
looks upon magic as the Poet looks upon poetry, that is to say, as a quality that is proper to him and
which he controls at will, as something from which he can expect glory and fortune, whereas a Priest
never looks upon himself as master of the divine power that traverses him. He is merely its servant and
minister, he invokes it by prayer and becomes its channel by emptying himself of himself.
There are bad priests, above all, there are mediocre, lukewarm and ignorant ones and the wrong
they do religion is immense. On the other hand, there are warm-hearted magicians who bring about an
abundance of healing and benefit. But in these matters neither good moral intentions nor happy practical
results can compensate for the fact that the Magician has bitten into the fruit of Knowledge and is like
a god because he listened to the serpent. Thus Apollonius of Thiana, for all his wonders, never brought
illumination or enlightenment to anyone, whereas the humblest of priests can do so for the greatest of
sinners by bringing him absolution and the viaticum some night.
We know very little about the Science of the Ancients, from which some of our contemporaries
conclude with great impertinence that they knew very little. But the grandiose works they have left,
which we are scarcely capable of understanding and in no way capable of repeating or equalling, show
on the contrary that they were steeped in profound knowledge. And not only their illustrious works, but
the humblest vase, the most ordinary ustensil, the most popular song hold a secret we cannot fathom.
Moreover, we know that they took as much care to safeguard their knowledge as we to show off
ours.
Pontiff or diviner, wise man or warlock, magician or master builder, Knight of the Temple or noble
traveler, not one of them, whether initiated in the underground cellars of a pyramid or in the cave of a
distiller of potions, not one in the course of the centuries ever betrayed the secret knowledge entrusted
to them. The last of the Pythagorean witches, rather than let her secret be torn from her in torture, cut
off her tongue with her teeth.
18.
Vulgarization or Profanation
Avarice and jealousy! say the people of today. All men have equal rights to the truth. Can one
keep it to oneself like a privilege of caste or a private possession? Our scientific vulgarization, with the
risks it brings and the unlimited horizons it opens, seems more generous.
Yes, if you call that man generous who, to do honour to equality of rights, offers his wife to every
passer-by in exchange for payment.
Or if you call generous the one who without foreseeing the consequences of his kindness
26
makes a gift of a loaded pistol to children at play.
As for me, I call the former a shameless rascal and the latter a madman who has no excuse, and I
give the same titles to those who have profaned and prostituted science, opposed it to religion, separated
it from wisdom and deviated it for lucre and domination; those who have sold the secrets of nature to
industrial firms and governments, spoiling peace and dishonouring war; those who have destroyed the
crafts and corporations, the mastery, freedom and honour of the work of the hands; those who have
stopped the circulation of life through worship, the arts, crafts and manners; those who have replaced
the regular rhythm of the heart by the ever-increasing fury of machinery; those who have filled the earth
with noise, haste, trouble, worry, ugliness and monotony; those who have multiplied the instruments of
oppression, destruction and death.
But they are in no danger of being pursued and hanged by the outraged nations. The silly will even
call them liberators and benefactors, for their morality has no measure for the unheard of act. To tell
the truth, the crime is beyond good and evil. It is the most complete renewal of the Original Sin since
the beginning of History.
Here it is indeed, the fruit of Knowledge bitten, chewed, savoured and swallowed, and here they
are, the resulting drunkenness and poisoning. The Second Fall, the condemnation, perhaps for all time,
of the human species; the redoubling, already begun, of the scourges.
19.
The Sacrilege of the West
It is the Christian West that perpetrates the sacrilege, the very people for whom Christ shed his
blood to wash them clean of the original stain. These are the people who deny the Saviour, abandon the
mission to preach salvation, and take on themselves the very opposite mission of enslaving the world
and devastating nature. These are the people who return to listen to Satan with enchantment and snatch
at the bait he offers them.
It is true that the Serpent has never spoken to them with a more seductive voice. He says to them,
Look at me whom you call animal and matter. I am the keen point of being. You have the Knowledgeof-Good-and-Evil thanks to me. The Jealous One has tried to take it back from you or to muddle it in
order to put you back into obscurity and bondage. Let us be lucid and simple: Good is Pleasure, Evil
is Unpleasantness. Sacrifice is unpleasant, therefore bad. Shake off your religious sleep and you will
wake up like gods. The truth that will set you free is to know the forces of nature and put them at your
service. Then you will fly in the air, harness fire to your carriages, capture lightning and cook your
meal with it, and every thing you desire will manufacture itself at your command. Renounce your silly
renouncements. Only consider your learning and your power, and you will see that all these things are
in your hands. . . And men, seeing that all this was true, could not believe that they were being deceived.
God himself recognized that it was true and once again let them keep what they had taken, saying,
I shall drive them out from before my face, lest they also lay their hands on the Tree of Life.
That is why, with all their science, they will never understand anything about life. They will never
enter into anything but the hells of dead matter in which they will stay buried. Nothing living can come
out of them; they can produce only dead things that bring death.
If we want to know how this will come about, let us listen to the apostle John who saw it beforehand
and described it in chapter XIII of Revelations.
27
20.
The Beast that rose up out of the Sea

And I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a Beast rise up out of the sea, having
seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name
of blasphemy.
And the Beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear and
his mouth of a lion, and the Dragon gave him power, and his seat, and great authority.
And I saw one of his heads, as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was
healed.
And all the world wondered after the Beast. And they worshipped the Dragon which
gave power unto the Beast.
And they worshipped the Beast, saying, Who is like unto the Beast? Who is able to
make war with him?
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies. And
power was given unto him to continue forty-two months.
And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name and His
tabernacle, and them that dwell in Heaven.
And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them.
And power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that
dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and
the faith of the saints.
The sea, that indeterminate mass, shimmerings, cold and alien, swollen with storms and gross with
riches, is Matter with its engulfing chasms and its changing surface of phenomena.
And the Beast that rises up out of the sea is the Science of matter, a monster with shiny scales and
tentacles. It has seven heads, for there are seven gifts of the spirit and seven deadly sins. And there we
have seven times as many heads as we need to understand all there is to know: that we are dealing with
a Beast.
And ten horns sprout from the seven heads; how, we cannot tell. And so much the worse if we
cannot figure out their uneven distribution, so long as we translate the figures into thoughts?
A horn, in biblical language, means a victorious force.
And this muddled proliferation of victorious forces rises up from the multiple heads that come out
of the Beast that rises up from the sea.
And each of its forces ensures it prestige and royalty (a crown) and it achieves the total royalty of
ten crowns.
And its heads bear names of blasphemy, for this octopus bred in glacial darkness, that thrusts and
swells itself up in tumult, this many-headed monster is an insult to God who is One and our Father in
Heaven.
Voracious is the Beast Science. Like hunger, its curiosity goes seeking whom to devour. It grabs
28
and reduces to itself. It panders to mans bestial cravings and enables the beast in him to triumph over
all the rest and so to become a scourge for the whole earth. Voracious is the Beast Science. The Beast
which I saw was like unto a leopard and his feet were as the feet of a bear and his mouth as the mouth
of a lion. It crawls supple like the leopard spotted like a snake. It has the heaviness of the bear and the
pride of the lion.
The Dragon, says the text, gave it its power and its throne, and great authority.
In the preceding chapter of revelations (XII, 9), we learn the Dragons name. He is called the Devil
or Satan, the seducer of the whole earth.
Here, scientists are going to burst out laughing as one man. They are not the kind of people to
believe in the Devil. But to affirm that he does not exist is the greatest service one can render him. It is
to grant him complete domination over oneself, for never is he freer to do his work than when he wears
the mask of inexistence.
But, joking and figures of speech apart, say the scientists, let us speak clearly and in the language
of today. It is true that we do not believe in the Devil, nor in his celestial opposite either, but we do
believe in truth. It is Truth we desire, love and pursue with detachment, with boldness and perseverance.
The good or bad applications men make of it do not concern us, we are not responsible for them. The
search for truth is a severe, almost ascetic, sometimes heroic discipline. And nothing is higher, purer or
more luminous than Truth. It is the major attribute of what is commonly called God.
To which it must be answered that Truth is knowledge of the One, of the Self, of Substance, of
Life, of the Beginning and the End, in short, of all that their science systematically ignores.
21.
The Truth of Modern Science
Scientific truth deals only with the measurement and formulation of phenomena.4 Of endless extent
on the surface of things, it has almost none in depth. It gets inside nothing, but gives an entirely external
explanation5 and proceeds to application. It is only a part of the vestments of Truth.
Truth is indeed the highest, purest and most luminous aspect of God. Whoever seeks God through
truth, finds Him. Whoever seeks God directly also finds truth and power. But whoever seeks the
attributes without seeking God follows in the footsteps of Satan.
Satans first name was Lucifer. The name means bearer of light. He was second only to God until
the day when, aspiring to be first, without God, he fell headlong, dizzy from the height of his own
exaltation, dazzled and burned by his own light.
Every mage who masters truth and power is a tiny Lucifer on the brink of the abyss. As for the
scientist who is impervious to Gods mysteries and trusts his own lights only, he is a fallen sorcerer, a
toy in the hands of the Prince of This World, Seducer of the whole earth. His scientific truth is a ray
of Satans sun and has its cold, funeral gleam.
22.
Philosophy
And I saw one of its heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed, and all
the world wondered after the beast. The wounded head of our science is Philosophy, which was once
4
5
Phenomen means appearance.

To explain means to unfold.
29
the single head of learning and had a human face. This beautiful face was called Wisdom, and wisdom
included all knowledge within the sphere of worship and meditation.
Now that the sciences are born independently of her and of the Principle, she has become confused
with them and has developed the same snout. And she is wounded besides.
Wounded by whom? By herself, bitten in the neck by her own teeth, by Criticism and Empirism,
her two fangs.
For centuries, inner life and all mystical virtue had been seeping out of her and she had been
feeding on abstractions, then Bacon and Kant gave her to understand that she could only escape from
the circle of giddiness and contradiction in which anaemia kept her imprisoned, by biting into the raw
meat of fact. Whereupon she capitulated to the physical sciences which are the six other heads, trying
to please and imitate them. But, out of place among them, she could be distinguished by her wound and
bewildered look.
23.
Worship of the Beast
And all the world wondered after the Beast adds the apostle, underlining the character of the century
with a sort of comic force.
And they worshipped the Dragon which gave power unto the Beast. And they called the Dragon
matter and believed in Matter instead of believing in God. They took it for Substance, Power, Being,
Life, Truth and the Way and devoted all their thoughts to it.
And they worshipped the Beast, saying, Who is like unto the Beast? Who is able to make war
with him?
Yes, indeed! What answer can one make to a mathematical demonstration? Though I speak with
the tongues of prophets and of angels, how can I withstand the paraphernalia of test-tubes and statistics?
The man of God says what he believes; the man of Science says what he knows, and the whole
earth admires the second and follows the Beast.
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking arrogant things and blasphemies. Beyond all
doubt, this mouth was given to Philosophys wounded head, the only one capable of human language.
Unable to chew on anything positive, it was all the more fit to spit out negations, denying and blaspheming what it had once adored. But the arrogance of Philosophy differed utterly from that of the
false prophets of olden days who claimed divine inspiration. The new philosophy denied all inspiration,
called into doubt and rejected all that comes from the Spirit.
And power was given him to continue forty and two months. Let us confess that it is difficult to
estimate what these months represent, since they have already lasted for over a century. But let us at
least note this: they will have an end.
And he opened his mouth and blasphemed against His name and His tabernacle and against those
who dwell in Heaven. He dared attack God Himself and called Him an illusion. He attacked the Church
and called it an imposture. He attacked the saints and called them madmen.
If Science were what a vain people thinks,6 a search for truth in the order of nature, what reason
would it have to rise up against Religion, whose truths are of another dimension, beyond the scope of
its instruments and out of all proportion to its measurements?
6
Voltaire: God is not what a vain people thinks.
30
The attacks of Science prove nothing against Religion, but betray the demoniacal spirit by which
Science is moved.
And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. To overcome them
is to turn men away from them and turn souls away from holiness.
24.
The Second Fall
. . . and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon
the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world.
A terrible prophecy which proves that we have not been speaking in vain of a complete renewal
of Original Sin. Mans second fall will therefor be of the same universal extent as the first. It will be
handed down from generation to generation and will be confirmed by education and the structure of
social life. It will become the normal disposition of civilized man. None will escape its fatal tyranny
but those whose soul and nature tend towards Love and Sacrifice, towards Love which is the reason for
the Creation of the world, and its foundation; towards the Sacrifice of Love which is its redemption.
If any man have an ear, let him hear; he that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity. Now or
never is the time to remind the revolutionaries who itch for what they call freedom, that they are turning
their backs on their liberation and forging their own chains.
Whoever prides himself on taming the formidable forces of inferior nature will find himself mastered and chained by them. Whoever applies his whole mind to matter will be seized by the Spirit of
Matter, and the Spirit of Matter is necessity, division, darkness and death.
He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. When a mans intelligence ceases to
be the life of the Spirit and turns into a weapon of combat, an instrument of power, that man falls into
the bondage of matter, which is necessity, division, darkness and death.
25.
The Beast that rose up out of the Earth

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a
lamb and he spoke as a dragon.
And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him and he causeth the earth
and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed.
And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on earth
in the sight of men.
And he deceiveth them that dwell on earth, by the means of those miracles which he
had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on earth, that they
should make an image to the beast which had the wound by the sword and did live.
And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast
should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast
should be killed.
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a
mark in their right hand and in their forehead, and that no man might buy or sell save that
31
he had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it
is the number of a man; and his number is 666.
We were forewarned of the appearance of the second beast by threats of slavery and death. The
second Beast rises up out of the Earth, (the hard, solid element on which men walk) in order to concretise
the works of the scientific octopus and make them palpable.
We know the second beast well, better than did the apostle John to whom it appears only as a
hellish vision. This beast is the Machine, in whose claws we are at present struggling. One-headed, but
two-faced; and its satanic voice gives the lie to its lambs horns.
Its lambs horns say, I am the New Messiah. To the peoples, I bring deliverance and promises of
the Future.
Come unto me, my children, and see how easy-going I am!
The old Messiah lured you with a dream of Paradise in the next world, but I can provide you with
Paradise in this one!
He preached poverty to you: I guarantee you Plenty. He showed you the strait and narrow path: I
open up the broad way.
He preached sacrifice to you, but I shall set you free through ease.
He spoke for the chosen few, but I am the salvation of the masses. . .
And his dragons voice roars out, War! War and revolt! Unleash the infernal powers! Dialectics
and the Fatality of History! Youre caught! You cant turn back now! Ha! Ha! You cant turn back
any more! Onward! Haste! Noise, stench, dizziness, terror! Onward! Onward! Straight into the abyss!
Man will be caught up, driven mad with fear, torn to pieces, cut and laminated out of existence. Onward,
the millions! and Long Live Progress!
26.
The Machine
The machine is nothing without science. That is why it is written that the second beast exerciseth
all the authority of the first beast in his presence. And all who dwell on the earth worship the first
Beast whose deadly wound has been healed.
For Science ravishes the worship of the ignorant crowd not by what she is, but by her marvelous
results in the machine.
And this is where we must return (since the text returns to it several times) to the wounded head of
Philosophy, and explain how it was healed.
The deadly wound of Philosophy was her denial of her own principles and of truth which could
not be justified to the other sciences. Her wound was that neither she nor the other sciences can grasp
Substance, Being, nor reveal anything concerning Ultimate Purpose.
How, then, was she healed? By the fact that it is of no importance whatever to common man that
knowledge should reach truth, so long as it leads to efficiency by means of the machine.
And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire to come down from heaven on the earth in
the sight of man. Indeed, all the wonders recounted in our ancient fables, every astonishing thing
accomplished by wise men of old, all these marvels have been realized by the work of little men in
32
whom there is not a scrap of poetry or a trace of supernatural grace. And so the sense of wonder has
died and the last of the wise men have gone, taking their secrets with them. The power of lightning
nowadays is harnessed to mans everyday chores, and common sense accepts the most astonishing
things as normal. . . . and he deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles
which he had power to do in the sight of the beast.
To deceive means to lead astray by lies. It is fairly clear (though not to all) that the benefit promised
and produced by the Machine is a snare.
To catch a monkey, they say, all you have to do is to hollow out a coconut, fix it to a tree-trunk, put
some appetizing food into it and leave a hole for the monkeys paw. When he grabs the food, he cannot
pull his fist out, and so he wriggles and wails without letting go, until he is caught.
They also say that the sight of a monkey captured does not at all deter the next monkey.
This monkey story makes plain the exact measure of freedom, necessity and absurdity, innocence
and roguery, practical reasoning and silly thoughtlessness required for man to fall into the trap of machinery.
Ill save you time, says the machine, speaking like a lamb, and no sooner has man accepted the
seductive invitation than all the days of his life are swallowed up by haste.
Ill save you toil, says the machine, and man jumps into the bottomless pitfall of colossal industry.
Ill give you wellbeing! (Who could resist such solicitude?) And lo! the air is fouled, the view
cut off, and we find ourselves in the stink and roar of engines, jostled on foot or blocked in traffic
jams, overwhelmed by stress and strain, by tons of cheap rubbish and tinned foods, by skyscrapers and
cooking factories and the final worldwide deflagration that will put an end to the madness.
. . . saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the beast which had
the wound by a sword and did live.
The wound is by a sword because it is just, and the Beast truly deserved death. Nevertheless, he
is alive, and even doubly alive, since he is smitten with the common fever called Utilitarian Agitation.
27.
The State
And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the Beast should both
speak. . .
The image of this knowledge without wisdom coupled with power without direction, purpose or
limit, will take shape in a machine made, not of cast iron or steel, but of living, speaking metal, and its
cogs and wheels will be living men. And it will be the Idol of the Mechanized State which will take
upon itself to impose on the inhabitants (not to say the prisoners) of the earth what they refuse to God,
that is to say, a cult, ceremonies, service and sacrifice amid terror and entrancement.
. . . that the image of the Beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the
image of the Beast should be killed. For the dictatorship of the Beast is not to be trifled with in matters
of religion.
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their
right hand and in their forehead, and that no man might buy or sell save that he had the mark, or the
name of the beast, or the number of his name.
The mark imprinted by the Machine on mans right hand and on all he makes; on his forehead and
33
on all he thinks, is the resemblance he bears to his idol. He becomes a machine, a spare part or a great
wheel. He has animated Machinery, and Machinery pays him back by taking his soul and replacing it
by a more convenient mechanism.
And it is written that no man may buy or sell save he hath the mark to show that it is in trade and
commerce that mechanical ways first set in and began their ruthless reign, spreading to all the rest.
28.
The number six hundred and sixty-six
. . . the name of the Beast is the number of his name. Let him that hath understanding count the
number of the Beast, for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.
Attempts have been made to interpret this number of man as a proper name and some have seen
it as the name of Nero, but the explanation is shortwinded. It is the full meaning of the number Six that
must be considered.
One is the Principle.
Two, creation, the creature, division.
Three, Perfection, Distinction in unity.
Six is made up of two opposite trinities; the perfection of Three in its elements, the weakness of
Two in the cohesion of the whole.
This number therefore marks the point where high virtues, noble ambitions and the finest discoveries of genius confront each other two by two to bring about a disaster as great as their grandeur.
This number is truly the sign of our times, when trouble springs not so much from our weaknesses
as from the estimable truths in which we believe and our courage in defending and imposing them.
From these fine truths come the technological and social progress which present themselves under
such alluring colours that it is difficult to detect in them the cause of the greatest scourges.
Which is the reason for the apostles warning Here is wisdom.
Yet it is obvious that the world swings from war to revolution only to swing back to even more total
war.
It is also obvious that war becomes more total and bondage more complete as sciences and machinery progress.
Why, then, is it so difficult to link the two things in a single concept and see that they are one and
the same thing, and that we must guard against it?
The reason is that Here is wisdom, and wisdom is rarer than ever in this century.
And the figure of the number of the Beast, consisting of three Sixes in a row, as if in diminishing
perspective, seems to indicate that it designates our epoch as a whole, together with the cascade of
catastrophe proper to it on the three planes of the world. And that it is pointless to attach it to a proper
name.
But then, what can it is the number of a man: and his number is Six hundred three score and six
mean? (We are warned twice of the difficulty of the question.)
We all know that the number of a man, a living soul, that is to say, an animal, is Six, since he was
created on the sixth day.
34
The number 666 surpasses him, but on the same level, by a dwindling repetition. Six goes on
sixing in a vain attempt to surpass itself and reach Seven.
To say that the number 666, that of the diabolical Beast, is the number of a man, is to say that man
has tried to surpass himself outwardly and on the level of nature, and on all levels of nature. Therein
lies the cause of the catastrophe.
35
36
II.
The Devil
takes a Hand
in the Game
Thou hast set our century in the light of thy countenance.
37
1. The Spirit of Play

When we were small, we knew how to tell a naughty boy from a good one. A good boy worked,
and when he had done his homework, went off to play. A naughty boy played all the time, played when
he should have been working, pretended to be working, but went on playing in secret.
Things were clear then. What a pity that later on our notions became confused and we forgot the
honest philosophy of our childhood!
What is true of children is truer still of men. There are good and wise men, those who work. There
are harmful ones, those who play at pretending they are working.
The fact is that one of the principal causes of the great scourges which have overwhelmed the
human species since the beginning of time seems to have escaped thinkers, reformers and preachers of
morals alike. Perhaps it has escaped them because of its frivolity.
To call it by its name may arouse surprise. It is a name that inspires neither terror nor horror.
Indeed, it is rather a pleasant name: the Spirit of Play.
But if the scourges can be traced, as we have shown, to the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil, that evil
from which all other evils derive, and if, little by little, this knowledge has led us to a systematic search
for what is pleasant, it should come as no surprise that our analysis arrives at Play, the most direct of
our efforts towards Pleasure.
2. The Innocence of Play

Yet, in our minds, nothing is more closely associated with Innocence than Play. And in the light of
morality, Play is innocent up to a certain point.
Play is vitality let loose for the sake of pleasure. Therein lies its innocence.
For the animal, as for the child bent on pleasure like a plant straining towards the light, play is
indeed innocent. But man, who has been given reason, can remain innocent in play only if he seeks,
along with pleasure, the reason for his pleasure. And the reason for the pleasure of play is the fulfillment
of life, of which pleasure is the sign.
In consequence, only those parts of his being that can be exercised at will and benefit thereby lend
themselves to play. This applies, for example, to suppleness of limb or to mental alacrity or to wit.
But the vital inner centres, the organs and the heart cannot be played with. Exciting these for the sake
of pleasure does not develop them but exhausts them, upsets and unbalances them, and the game is no
longer called pleasure, but vice.
The excuse and justification of play is therefore that it remains superficial. And what is true for
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things of the body is truer still for things of the spirit. Joke about divine mysteries, and the game ceases
to be a game and is called sacrilege.1
A man who plays for his amusement rediscovers his childhood and his animality. This is no condemnation of play but, on the contrary, its justification. For, just as sleep is a descent into a lower
sphere of being, and therefore health-giving refreshment, so play is restful and recreative in its artless
simplicity. But if play is prolonged indefinitely and absorbs the whole being, it is no longer diving, but
drowning. And just as indulgence in sleep becomes laziness and one of the capital sins, so abandoning
oneself to play is dissipation and the downfall of the self.
Light and inconsequential, play is justified only if it remains so, and is a good thing only if it can
be taken up and dropped offhand. Whoever gets caught up in play and is carried away by it, abandons
himself to a devouring passion and opens the door to madness.
Now, the justification of play is its frivolity. For the game to remain innocent, the player must
throw himself into it without ulterior motives. But as soon as the frivolous is turned to use, as soon as
the enjoyment of heightened vitality changes into greed of gain, then the Devil takes a hand in the game
and it veers towards ruin and public danger.
3. Romping
But let us take a look at innocent games and see just how innocent they are.
The simplest is romping. It is common to animals, children and men. It consists in giving free rein
to over-abundant or forcibly contained energy. Walking, climbing, sliding, scuffling and shouting all
these are harmless and healthy.
But a distinction must be made between innocent games and forbidden ones. As soon as an organ
becomes excited and takes liberties for the sole purpose of pleasure, play turns into perversion. That is
why the most innocent of games is nevertheless a venial vice. Play is pleasant insofar as it is exciting
and is exciting insofar as it intoxicates. It becomes necessary in disciplined and mannerly life as an
antidote against the poison of constraint.
So a consideration of romping throws light on the first characteristics of play: dangerous excess,
latent vice.
4. Figurative Games
Figurative games are of a higher species. They require players endowed with imagination, such as
dogs, cats, monkeys and children, some of whom may have beards and white hair.
On this level, energy no longer escapes from the living creature like released steam, but takes the
form of make-believe through which it expresses itself. If need be, it endows some outward object with
an unexpected temporary form. Thus the kitten turns a wind-blown scrap of paper into prey which it
never tires of surprising and killing. Children act likewise when they dress up men, animals and things,
give them fabulous names and fantastic figures and masquerade to the point of forgetting who they are.
Human industry gives a body to the image of play and the result is a toy a rag doll, a wooden horse,
a lead soldier or a paper boat.
1
Thus the philosopher who plays with truth commits sacrilege. The blood of nations has often been the price of a philosophers game.
39
The most rudimentary of toys, the rattle a thing that moves, makes a noise and glitters, and
which, by its repeated stimulation of the senses, draws attention outwards embodies the essence of
play: namely, diversion, which is the etymological opposite of conversion, and amusement or distraction, which is the opposite of recollection, reflexion and inner life.
All figurative games are diversions, ways of coming out of oneself without entering anyone else.
The game is played with toys, but also with all manner of dress, attitudes, gestures and mimicry, and
consists in changing ones age, place and status. The four-year-old girl becomes a mother or a grandmother, the shy schoolboy an explorer, a highway robber or a general, the young rogue becomes a
prince, the young princess, a shepherdess. These games are innocent enough.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that they are at bottom Fiction, that it is only one step from fiction
to Shamming, Dupery and Error, that the step is quickly taken and sometimes unwittingly.
From this consideration of Figurative Games we discover another characteristic of play: distaste
for the real, disrespect for truth.
5. Of Regulated Games
One floor up, we have Regulated Games, inaccessible to animals and small children, for they
require the use of reason. These games are not innocent nor are they for the innocent. They are Civilized
Mans ways of escape from the constraints of civilization, at school, in the office, in the factory and in
the drawing room, the constraint of imprisonment within four walls in enforced immobility or enforced
repetition of the same movements: the constraint of having to speak politely and make pleasant faces
to all and sundry. The savagery Civilized Man must regretfully repress at all times takes its revenge in
play. That is why ball-games, boxing, racing, competition, and all regulated games are a semblance of
strife.
However, the reasoning animal cannot react against his reason and habits of civil life without
remembering them and his Regulated Games take on something of their opposite; work and convention.
So he introduces into play technique practised in crafts, theory as in the arts, arbitrary rules and taboos,
and concern about elegance as in fashionable society. For delay and obstacles make the achievement of
pleasure more difficult and therefore more precious.
For the consideration of Regulated Games, new aspects of play become apparent: hostility, a taste
for idle complication and pretence of extremely serious business.
The characteristic of hostility is not absent from even the most ingenuous romping. The kid tries
out its horns, the cat its claws, the puppy its teeth, the child his fists, and his favorite game is toy
breaking. The most complete form of romping for men is the cruel game of hunting. Figurative games
express a certain revolt, a certain refusal of the real, a flight which is the negative form of struggle,
unless the game represents battle and torture. No game disposes towards charity or benevolence, not
even the doll games in which curly heads are bent in touching attitudes.
6. Games of Chance
Lastly, there is a fourth species of games: the Game of Chance, which is not innocent at all. In this,
pleasure comes from seeing the natural inequality of the players supplanted by the injustice of luck, and
effort and talent supplanted by chance.
A final characteristic of play is thus revealed: the Pleasure of Injustice.
40
It is not surprising, then, that we call naughty whoever plays all the time. Play develops excitement of the senses, mental dissipation, the appeal of external things, a taste for shamming, injustice and
aggressiveness, in short, all the features of mischief under the mask of innocence.
7. Of Play and Work

Play is relaxation, as rest is, but it runs counter to rest for its relaxation is brought about by excitement and excessive activity, so that diversion, like work, more often than not ends up in fatigue.
Play, like work, is an activity. It has its goals and its rules as work has. But it runs counter to work.
For the aim of work is to produce some useful object or result, whereas play produces nothing and the
aim of play is merely to make play possible.
The aim of play is worthless in itself. It consists in putting such and such a ball into such and such
a hole, in taking or checking such and such a pawn, in picking up or putting down all the cards. . .
The rule of work is to reach the most desirable goal in the shortest time, with the least effort. The
rule of play is to interpose the greatest number of obstacles and to exact the greatest possible effort for
an insignificant and worthless goal.
When work busies several workers, the rule of work requires them to cooperate. Some must carry
the beam the others put in place, one must hold the plank the other is squaring or nailing. Thus work
unites workers. But when play busies several players, the rule of play compels them to prevent one
another from reaching the goal. And in the case of solitary games, the rule of the game itself serves as
a tenacious and far seeing adversary.
Games may be an antidote to worry and business, but they redouble the poison whenever they add
the stimulus of profit to the excitement of play.
The gratuitous character of a game is the measure of its nobility. In chess, gain has no part; in cards,
profit is half the pleasure; in gambling, gain and loss make up the whole game. There may even be no
game at all, as in roulette. While regulated games are sham work and hollow arts, Games of Chance are
sham games and double pretence (a triple falsification can be achieved through cheating). . .
Whoever gives himself up to Games of Chance exercises no strength or talent of any sort but withers
all the resources of his body, heart and mind. It is therefore the most sterile and insane kind of play.
8. Of Play and War

While play is often sham work, as absorbing, as unproductive, most trades and business, particularly the most honored and lucrative, are sham games, devoid of innocence or pleasure.
The first, most hazardous, and most glorious of these games (if not the most profitable to the
players) is beyond all doubt that of war and the military arts.
Just as games are mock combat, so war is a mock game. By mock I mean that it is sometimes taken
for useful work from which happy results may be expected.
War is a more exalting game than hunting, and more intriguing than chess, as our grandfathers
know, but people of today have forgotten.
These who do not enjoy it have set about discovering reasonable causes for it and have succeeded
in finding some in the economic needs of the nation.
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And, indeed, in the days when victory entailed the enslavement of the vanquished and the distribution of booty, women, and land to the soldiers and citizens of the conquering nation, war (apart from
the risk of defeat) appeared to be an irreproachable economic undertaking. At least, that was how it
looked at first sight. But Rome, which had conquered the world by this method, brought about her own
downfall, since her sons left their bones in far-off expeditions while affranchised slaves or barbarian
mercenaries occupied their places in the Forum and the Palatinate.
For as soon as military brutality combines with civil prudence and legal scruples, war becomes
an unprofitable operation. In his famous analysis, The Great Illusion, Norman Angell proves by
reference to the figures that modern warfare is waged at the expense of the conquerors, and that every
annexation, even colonial occupation, far from enriching a nation, puts it into the red.
It is strange that people have so often failed to perceive that the extension of a state brings no
profit to its citizens. Were this not so, the citizens of small states like Switzerland or Sweden would
be the most wretched of men. As for those of the Republic of San Marino, they would perpetually be
struggling in the throes of suffocation, while the subjects of big states like Russia, China or India would
be reveling in plenty and splendor.
It follows that if nations, even today, are still striving to widen their frontiers, it is not because
they are seeking their own interest but because they are interested in the game. Every game has a
conventional goal, for example, throwing this ball into that hole. The heroes who have managed to
widen the frontiers of their country feel satisfaction comparable to that of a team of athletes who have
made the ball go into the hole. This satisfaction, and the noise of applause, make them forget that they
have done nothing good and that their entire gain is that a ball has gained a hole.
Not that war is waged for pleasure or in a disinterested fashion. Nations rush into it with furious
ambition (the ambition, by the way, is always puerile, and always disappointed), following twisted (and
incidentally absurd) calculation. In the same way, the clients of gaming houses go to their ruin, not out
of generosity but because of their greed of gain.
But this game is a vice. War is the Great Public Vice that consists in playing with the blood of man.
Nothing as serious as hunger can explain war. Were it so, the most famished peoples, the Hindus,
for example, would not also be the most peaceful, whereas those who prepare and trigger off world wars
are the wealthiest of all, so fatly endowed with land, gold, and industry that they seem to be overflowing
rather than looking for new resources.
Nothing as reasonable as need causes war. Work suffices. If need be, there are always more
expedient and reliable arrangements than the luck of arms.
No, it is not need that causes war, but excess, wanting to outdo the neighbour, the pleasure of
trampling upon a fellow creature, the sin of having too much, which makes one lose all sense of limit
and go mad with craving for more, the mania always to be right. There is no necessity in all that. It is
excitement roused by excess, the folly of play.
Nothing as natural as hatred is the cause of war. Hereditary enemies may esteem and admire each
other, as was once the rule, or not know each other at all before they set off to embrace each other
and mingle their blood on the battlefield. Hatred is never anything other than a consequence of wars
atrocity and it most affects non-combattants.
It is likewise a mistake to think that the fighters are necessarily animated by love of the Fatherland
or a sense of duty or the spirit of sacrifice. The fiercest and most valorous are sometimes mercenaries
who are indifferent to the cause they are serving. They are merely carried away by the game.
It is a perpetual wonder that decent young men, kind fathers, devout and charitable churchgoers,
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commit all kinds of murder and devastation with self-complacency as soon as they get into a uniform.
What has come over them to explain such a reversal? The suspension of conscience proper to the player.
Point out to children that the four lined-up chairs in which they are playing at trains are chairs, that
their feet are not wheels and the floor is not a railway they will grant you your chairs, then climb into
their train, blow the whistle, and thunder off full steam. In the same way, if a soldier reflects, he will
recognize that the enemy is a man like himself, a good man who longs for his children and home: it is
as plain as that a chair is a chair. However, as soon as the good man appears on the horizon, he takes
aim at him, just as at a clay pipe in a fair booth. Before killing him, he has emptied him of his humanity
as the game requires.
That is how so many cool and cheerful crimes are perpetrated without there being any criminals.
Leaders act in the name of a blind people and automatic laws. The people act on orders from their
leaders. Who is responsible? The great systematic irresponsibility and deliberate thoughtlessness of the
players.
9. The Game of Politics

I shall not speak of Diplomats, those sly and amiable peacetime warriors, public card and chess
players, nor of their clandestine brothers, Spies, those licensed tricksters, but shall move on to the
second species of mock game, the great society game called Politics.
In the days of Kings, this game was the privilege of a closed and particularly turbulent and corrupt
society, the court. They elbowed one another for office, prebends, sinecures, titles, and pensions, and
made their way by flattery, slander, conspiracy, and amatory intrigue.
Now that the street has come into the court and the mob is sovereign, the priviledge of turbulence
and corruption has been extended far and wide. The mask of surface elegance and politeness has fallen,
but hypocrisy lives on. Lying has become more insolent, toadying more blatant because of the vulgarity
of the new tyrant. Ambition, jealousy, and envy have swollen with the number.
Politics is now a regulated game for which teams train. These teams are called parties and are
distinguishable by the colors they display or the place they occupy in the circus where they fight.
Meanwhile, the spectators in their millions, whole nations of them, all hopping mad, howl, boo, lay
bets, and double the stakes on their favorites or the likely winners. The crossfire of opinions heats their
brains and their stuffed heads explode. The city, and even the countryside, shake with their agitation,
which unsettles factories and workshops, splits houses in two, and scratches ancient rancour until it
draws blood. Simple souls swell and fester with factitious prejudice and artificial hate. War has to do
its utmost, at the very last minute, to bring about their sacred union, union in common execration, and
goad them toward another form of diversion.
10.
Of Play and Commerce
The third kind of mock game is known by the name of Commerce. The speediest and most condensed game of this type is doubtless the stock market, speculation on the exchange, which does not
at all differ from games of chance, particularly those in which a man stakes his wifes honour or his
childrens heritage.
However, up to a certain point, all merchants speculate on stock value, since between the cost of a
thing, which is the measure of the labour that went into producing it, and its price, which is the measure
43
of the desire to possess it, there subsists variable tension which is the mainspring of all commercial
traffic. Without bringing any new riches into the world, the merchant draws his from exchange. He
plays with the fruit of other mens work.
Real work underlies the mock game of Commerce, namely, the conveyance and distribution of
goods. But this useful work, and fair and modest payment for it, are of such little interest to the dealer
that he usually gets other people to do it while he devotes himself to cunning speculation which will
gain him a fortune (a word that means chance and implies that it is indeed won through gaming).
The dealer will maintain that he works, that from dawn till dusk he is occupied, preoccupied,
and overtasked. But runners also give themselves more to do than fullers, and footballers more than
plowmen.
According to the rule of play, and contrary to the rule of work, the dealer acts against all other
dealers. The game consists in putting some better-looking article on the market at a lower price before
anyone else does, and in thus winning a race which is actually called Competition.
By multiplying human contact and imports from abroad, by fostering pleasure, convenience, and
curiosity of all kinds, Commerce is an active factor of civilization, or at least of a certain type of
civilization which we are tempted to think the only one, seeing that it is ours as it was that of ancient
Greece and Renaissance Italy. But these were profane and external civilizations, quick to ripen and
quick to rot, quite unlike the ancient and mysterious cultures of China, India, and Egypt, which were
founded not on play, but on ritual.
Commerce presupposes freedom, which it also introduces and develops. Let there be no mistake:
its freedom is that of free play, not of free will, still less of the deliverance known to saints and sages. It
is freedom of enterprise, without which commerce would suffocate; freedom of morals, because strict
and sober morality hamper it, whereas loose morals put it at its ease. Free thinking and tolerance,
because thought is of little account to the tradesman, who neither knows the absolute nor wants to know
it, and has no use for truth, but likes truths, and the interplay and shock of conflicting truths. Therefore
all commercial civilizations mock and sap the revelations of faith but hold sacred the opinions of each
and any.
Commerce is sometimes accompanied by a rich flowering of the arts, provided that the arts it favors
supply costly objects for sale, and yet another form of diversion. Provided, also, that they forget their
original, fundamental dignity, their magic, prophetic, and ritual value.
Commerce is an active factor of corruption, and the development of the one always entails an aggravation of the other, because it spreads far and wide the poison of rivalry, the falsification of products
and values, the fever of agitation, the display and turning to profit of all things, and the prostitution of
conscience.
Commerce, especially in troublous times (when it prospers all the more), enriches so many vulgar
and uneducated people suddenly and haphazardly that the ranks of the society they have forced break
up, and they seize all the posts of government. Now, unlike the king, the priest, and the noblemen,
the newly rich have received no consecration, not even a conventional one, have no prestige, not even
ill-founded, have no authority and no preparation for precedence, so that the nation finds itself adrift.
Nobody serves the newly rich out of a sense of duty or obeys them out of respect or trust, or imitates
them because they inspire affection or admiration. The newly rich can only reign by corruption.
Commerce destroys the earthly and fleshly ties of man, destroys the natural, organic groups in
which he was rooted, his fathers farm, the parish, the guild. The whirlwind of business grinds the
nations down, reduces them to mobs in which each pushes his way through the others without knowing
them, like fish after their prey.
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Commerce knows the old adage, Divide and rule. It sets up the regime of separation, and puts
a great gulf between the producer and the consumer, a gulf it alone can bridge, so that it seems to be
almost a benefactor, not to say a savior. This ringmaster does admirable conjuring tricks, snatching the
commonest objects from under our noses and putting marvelously packed exotic ones in their place.
Thanks to his foresight, on any beach on the coast of England you can open a can of fish that has come,
more than fresh, from Japan; in any Devonshire village, not more than ten yards from the cowshed, you
can unwrap a pat of butter that has come all the way from New Zealand.
You might think that such complicated carryings on are superfluous, but it only takes a crisis
(which, by the way, never fails to occur) to show that they have become indispensable and that our
lives depend on them. As soon as man acquires intelligence, bread earned in the sweat of his brow is
no longer enough for him. He learns to play, and to feed himself by means of the game.
Commerce does it utmost to decorate, disguise, adulterate, and falsify produce, wherein a common
feature of play is apparent: contempt of the real and a taste for subterfuge and travesty.
Under colour of giving goods a more attractive appearance and making them easier to conserve,
transport, and handle, it plays about with them until they have become something quite different, or
takes something quite different and makes it represent or replace the product desired. This is how fancy
materials have come into existence: sheet iron, chromium, nickel, concrete, galalith, celluloid, and
plastics, the fantasies of stinginess which confer on things of this century their false, empty, mean look,
the tinsel glory of the new truths. In this domain, the inventions of the mischievous attain a kind of
burlesque poetry; sausages are made from sawdust, cream from horse albumen, coffee from rotten figs,
silk from glass, wool from milk, and even butter from water.2
Real wood is made into imitation wood. Poultry is reared on petroleum, calves fattened with
injections, hens made to lay square eggs ready for transport.3 Similarly, opinion is formed and deformed
by publicity and the press, and played about with at their convenience.
The country in which trafficking prospers most is reduced to feeding on canned stuff, a guarantee
of weediness for generations to come. Sugar and rice are spoiled by bleaching, drinks (and I dont
mean alcohol, but harmless syrups and lemonades) are colored and flavored with violent poisons. But
it is all grist to the mill of commerce, and doubly so for the chemical and pharmaceutical trades. Bread
has been attacked with singular insistence. The only bread to be found in shops, white bread, is one
of the most pernicious of adulterated foods. As for real bread, the bread that gave our forefathers their
strength and no doubt something of their virtues, the bread Christ broke with his men, saying This is
my flesh, the bread of truth, which is of the colour of the earth, we do not even remember its taste. The
very earth itself has been attacked. Drugged with chemical fertilizer, it has been forced and exhausted
until henceforward it can bring forth only insubstantial crops laden with unknown poisons. And while
we try out ever more unnatural and untraditional methods of farming, the desert gains yearly on arable
land. The water in our rivers has been fouled and turned into poison. But all that is nothing to what is in
store, since commerce will shortly have replaced farm produce (so extremely cumbersome and coarse)
by nourishing pills (so practical, healthy, and ideal), scientifically seasoned, of course, with vitamins.
Of all meats, the one with the least body in it and therefore the most adventurously advantageous
to commerce is surely diversion. For an intelligent man, bread is not enough, as you well know, O
Business Men, and if you are realists and want to get fat, feed him on Nothingness, for that is what he
likes most of all. Feed something quickly to the gaping idle thrown into the streets in their millions
by the whims of fortune and mechanized labour. The public is a big baby: show him your rattles. He
2
A German substitute, derived from hydrogen, that must be eaten raw because, if you heat it in a pan, it returns to its
original state and disappears.
3
Soft-shelled eggs laid directly into boxes (in America).
45
wants nothing better than to be attracted, he has nothing better to do than to lose himself, nothing more
pressing than to flee himself. To be diverted is to be as if one were not. It is to be relieved of ones
being and fritter away into nothingness, as Beelzebub, King of the Flies, who reigns over the vulgar
and the mob, well knows. And you, since you have taken a bigger bite of Knowledge than the others,
play at making them play, and turn the merry rout to your advantage. Assail the passer-by on all sides
with garish posters, winking lights and stunning noise, mirrors and shop-windows. As soon as you have
caught his eye, allot him a shiny article. He will give not a thought to the price: diversion puts him into
the mood for spending. To him, it is just something that has caught his fancy, a trinket, a bauble, to
you, hard cash. Inveigle him into a bar where the music syrupy, saccharined, or drugged will help
him to swallow the alcohol, and the alcohol to swallow the music, and the whole mixture pours coins
into your cash box. Theaters, novels, nightclubs, jukeboxes, dives, music halls, cinemas, magazines,
the radio going full blast on all the floors of all the houses, produce and reproduce diversion, and even
when you sell it cheap, you are always the winner. This is also the business of the big press, for which
whole forests are ground down into paper pulp.
So get ready for the triumphs of World Fairs and erect Eiffel Towers, hollow monuments, in honour
of the goddess Diversion that she may always be propitious to you.
Do not despise elegance or think lightly of vanity, which is not at all vain for the industrious
entertainer. Bits of finery, make-up, perfumes, curls, real or false jewelry, even buttons are things of
importance.
Institute lotteries and auction sales if you want to be sure of more-than-winning every round. Do
not forget racing, where fortunes veer and vanish in exemplary style. But above all, give every encouragement to what, from an old French word duly barbarized, is now called sport. Give your emphatic
approval to every speech to the effect that sport is beneficial to the health of the nation, and indeed even
to the health of the young, and at least try to benefit from it yourself. It is the sign of one of the plagues
of the century.
The plague of which sport is the sign is the degradation of work. It is because there is no longer
any joy in work that games are exalted to this point. Sport was invented by a privileged class to ward off
the bodily degeneration that lies in wait for the idle. Some of these sports, such as ball games, cycling,
and boxing, have become popular crazes because even manual work has been mutilated by the factory
just as the intellect has been emptied by office work.
As for the sports practiced by professionals, brutes who are celebrated as heroes and models, they
are reduced, for the people, to aggressive, sedentary heat, senseless and unhealthy excitement. However,
it is an excellent stimulus to international rivalry and sound preparation for war.
And business men, if you are in earnest, dont forget fun! From political caricature to smutty songs,
from the circus to the operetta, from movie cartoons to humorous novels, laughter is a mine that gives
rich returns. Laughter is the ecstasy of diversion. The public who swallow this bait will never have
enough of it, for they are totally empty.
A monkey pulling another monkeys tail puts on a suitably preoccupied look. Do as he does when
you are hanging on the telephone and convince us all, yourself included, of the excessively serious
nature of your business.
11.
Noon at two oclock
The French say of a stupid person who complicates things uselessly that he searches for noon at
two oclock. All players do this, since the rule of the game is to multiply mock obstacles.
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Our civilization could be defined as that which found noon at one oclock. In order to justify such
a strange thing and to preserve an appearance of gravity (Woe unto him who laughs in the middle of a
game of poker!), we have taken care to put forward an economic explanation. In times of war or crises,
or as an effect of surprise, this manoeuvre has no doubt made it possible to get all the shops in the
land to close one hour earlier and thus save electricity. But as soon as a misuse of language becomes
customary, it loses its point. The only reason one can find for it is that people have such a taste for
falsification that nothing is safe from them, not even the sun.
12.
The Money Game
Since money serves as the measure of the market value of things, and all money bears the mark
of the state that guarantees it, what is one to think of a state that makes a forger of itself? To put it at
the mildest, the liberal regime, which is that of gamesters, has ended up by raising fraud to the level
of a state institution. Nowadays, every government in turn plays around with the bank-note printing
machine to falsify its accounts and hand on its fraudulent finance to its successor. But the trick being
too well known to deceive anyone, it becomes a gratuitous and conventional pretence, a game that
amuses nobody. The game consists in degrading the values which are the basis for measuring values,
like a dog chasing its own tail. This juggling affects signs only. What was called one is now called ten,
what was called ten is called a hundred, and at the end of the farce everyone is a millionaire and no
better off than before. This practical joke leaves a general impression of sliding into a vacuum. Among
the multitude of financial experts in search of the stroke of genius that will restore confidence, I wager
that not one will hit upon the only means of solving the problem instantaneously calling a dollar a
dollar and bringing as much gold as is necessary out of the vaults of the bank where it lies useless so
long as it is buried.
But these are innocent games compared with the devaluation of morals and the degradation of man.
In our world, we are each as dependent on others for the satisfaction of the least of our needs as a
child at the breast is on its mother, yet all surrender, all gratitude, all kindness are rigorously excluded
from this dependence. Each looks upon others merely as a means of serving his own ends. The keenest
and finest joy he can have of his neighbour is to beat him by playing according to the rules. Money
then becomes the sole support of his life, the sole link between men, the sole measure of all things
and of man himself. Good and evil are reduced to profit and loss, intelligence to cunning, happiness to
possession, honor to spending, and time, which is our lives, is money, as now say those who sell their
own and those of other men.
13.
Games of Progress
To the fever of Business we owe the canker of Progress. This is a unique case. Indeed, it is the
finest, most highly reputed, interesting, widely studied, and envied canker in the world. Thanks to
the strangle-hold of machinery and chemical disintegration, it opens up to future humanity limitless
prospects of hell on earth and collective suicide.
14.
Of Speed
The main goal of progress is to accelerate transport and communication more and more. This is
a goal such as players set themselves, in itself insignificant and void, like throwing balls into holes: a
47
goal which, at its best, serves only to permit play. In fact, the speed gained serves the development of
commerce, apart from which it serves no one and nothing.
Proof of this is not hard to find: the countries where people go to the greatest trouble, take the
greatest risks, and undertake the heaviest expense in order to procure time-saving machines, are precisely those where everybody is always in a hurry or late, and where haggard, hunted-looking people
tell you they have no time. They look as if they did not know what is happening to them.Yet it is not
difficult to understand. Time and speed are not objects or riches that can be heaped up, and above all,
they cannot be possessed in common. Time is a measure, a relation, and of relative reality. If I have a
car and gain time, it can only be in relation to those who go on foot. If everybody drives a car, I gain
nothing. When traffic as a whole speeds up, whoever walks at a normal pace might as well have had his
legs amputated. Far from saving time, general acceleration cuts time short, not to mention all the time
lost in forging and repairing the machines-for-catching-up-on-time.
One of Andersens tales that we enjoyed as children could teach us a lesson today. It is the story
of the child to whom the wicked fairy brought her gift: the ball of the string of his time, an admirable
plaything, the possession of which made him almost the equal of the gods. Whenever he was hungry or
sleepy, he had only to pull the string to find himself at table or in bed. Whenever he felt ill, he pulled and
felt well. Whenever he wanted anything, he pulled and it came. He pulled off his childhood years for
fun and to avoid the cane, grammar and arithmetic. As a young man, he pulled frantically to rid himself
of love sickness and heartache. He resolutely pulled beyond the worries of middle age and business,
them pulled faster and faster as pleasure became more rare.
In a few weeks time, he perceived that he had grown old and decrepit. To his horror, he became
aware that the fairy had mocked him. He bitterly regretted things past, but there is no turning back! So
great was his anguish that he saw no other escape than to pull the thread. Which he did, and died.
And that is just what we do with our machines, our strings to bypass toil and speed up time.
To say that the advantage of all this rushing is nil would be an understatement. It has been clearly
established that the resulting perturbation is profound, the losses immense, the dangers deadly. When a
whole civilization exhausts itself going round in circles faster and faster, grinding emptiness, emptying
itself of its substance to transform it into speed, and starts to celebrate its fever as a sign of health, then
it has gone mad and is rushing toward the abyss.
What is noticeable in the first instance is that these ear-splitting gasoline machines, this noisy and
noisome merry-go-round, these toboggans and rockets for projecting speed fanciers to the four corners
of the earth, have all the characteristics of the rattle.
They are said to be economical, which is mockery, since they are ruinous. They are said to be
practical, which is yet another lie, for they obstruct, collide, and crash into one another. In peacetime
and on holidays, they kill and mutilate more people than a war.
They drive as many people mad as alcohol does. In America, ahead of us in all things, there are
already ten million neurotics, enough to fill an asylum with three times more inmates than the population
of Paris.
But their great advantage is that they divert, pull the mind outwards, shine, make a din, and kill
time.
And the unanimous, furious refusal to listen to any talk tending to turn men away from machines
is due above all to their childish attachment to playthings and their neurotic passion for games.
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15.
Of Degradation
A Christian thinker4 has analyzed the techniques of degradation. It was he who coined the expression.
This is his term for the treatment that the police of military or popular dictatorships inflict on
their enemies, and by which they sap the innermost sources of their resistance and debase them so
utterly that in the last torture they undergo, they cannot even have the consolation of inspiring pity,
nor offer their deaths as testimony. This is achieved by scientific torture, all the more atrocious as it is
inconspicuous, all the more effective as the victim is made to look ridiculous, by beating and threats, but
also by boobytraps and practical jokes. He is goaded by repeated infinitesimal psychosomatic shocks,
by medical injections and drugs. This is how in reprisal camps men have been made to crawl and roll
in filth, spy on their fellow victims, denounce them, and even execute them with a pocket knife when
commanded to do so. This is how, in Soviet trials, a former dignitary comes to make spontaneous
confessions which fill the civilized world with stupefaction, and to denigrate himself effusively while
his wife and children outdo each other in disowning him and insisting that he be put to death. Not even
the martyrdom of a bishop escapes being turned into a lamentable and loathsome farce.
Never can we shudder enough with horror at such proceedings, which are the rape of the soul and
the dishonor of the human name. Those who have leanings towards a forceful solution, a revolution of
the right or the left, can never reflect sufficiently on such collusion between knowledge and the powers
of darkness.5
That being said, neither right nor left wing dictators can boast of having invented methods. All
they have done is to apply them with stricter logic and more simplicity.
Tell me, good people, tell me! Not at Buchenwald or in Soviet prisons in the polar circle is the
greatest and most treacherous of all insults to the human species being perpetrated, the juggling with
human seed to which scientists are devoting themselves.
And Pithecanthrope was it a Nazi or a Bolshevist who fabricated the monster with a human
tibia and a chimpanzees jaw and exhibited the novelty with such self-satisfaction at the Fair which
inaugurated our century? And for what purpose, if not to ridicule man in his aspiration to the eternal?
Who invented the new genealogical tree of the species, the one that has nothing to do with the Tree
of Life in the Bible or the Nordic Iggdrasil, or the Tree of Brahma? Whence comes this tree whose
trunk is a mollusc, whose suckers are fish, whose thorns are crabs or insects, the main bough reptiles or
toads, the branches quadrupeds and homo sapiens the fine flower? What does it matter if science can
tie this tree together only with strings? A myth is a sign and its value is in its signification. What does
this one signify: but the desire to tear God out of creation, to efface Him from the Beginning, and to
replace him by Chance and Competition, the great gods of Commerce?6
As for the jigsaw puzzles and red herrings that go under the name of biblical criticism, and the fable
of the spuriousness of the Holy Scriptures, has ever any Nazi or Bolshevist had such finical patience or
4
Gabriel Marcel, in Man against the Human

Already, we see with alarm that the French Army now has a psychological service whose proceedings are based on
Nazi, Russian and Chinese methods (note from 1959).
6
Favourable mutations that have come about by chance, are maintained by heredity (chance again) and accumulated like
capital, the struggle for life (competition). These are mercantile views of nature.
I shall return to the subject in this book, but above all in the Commentary on Genesis. Once again, the point is not to discuss
how much truth there is in this current of opinion as to discover the motive of the passion that impels so many men to
brandish an argument of which the most advanced scientists are beginning to recognize the weakness. But without any care
for objectivity, the masses in increasing number are making it a creed. People nowadays should read Chestertons Eternal
Man good for cooling heated heads.
5
49
been so slyly malevolent as to play such games? And what about the myth of the inexistence of Jesus
Christ (Hey! What sort of vanishing trick is this?) the doubly deceitful myth which makes a myth of
Jesus of Nazareth so as to wipe out God and man at one blow in seeming innocence.
And what about the inflation of all the words that are most precious to the human heart, the word
Freedom and the word Love?
What about the legions of novelists who keep us plunged in a lake of shit until we spontaneously
confess against ourselves that man is nothing but shit?
What about the jugglery of Fashion by which its sly and perhaps vindictive makers, mostly
sodomites, give free rein to their wit, and what about the grotesque gravity of their willing victims?
O Rose and Lily! O flower of poetry, spring of clear water in the moss, daughter of Eve, gentle virgin
and venerated mother! Look at her, painted and tinted, floured like a clown, swinging her hips, perhaps
dressed up as a man, smoking and whistling! Or dressed up like a little girl Peep bo! or perhaps as
a little boy, in shorts, bouncing her skittish balloons, a spontaneous confession of extreme degradation.
What about the ravages of alcohol which rots and disfigures the race without raising a single protest,
so intimidating is the dictature of Commerce. And the habitation of concrete boxes all looking alike!
And the incessant maddening roar of engines, and the condemnation to a life sentence of compulsory
music and television for all. Can the technique of Cretinization of the Family be carried further? And
if these methods appear harmless beware of thinking them less efficient for de-humanization.
16.
Of Colonial Degradation
But if you are wondering where the thing is at its bloodiest, take a look at colonial conquest and
you need wonder no more.
There, for the last three or four centuries, techniques of degradation of which the most appalling
is degradation by technique, have spread over the entire world, in all their scandalous horror highly
approved and supported by the most liberal regimes.
So that all that dwell upon the earth, all tribes, all peoples, all tongues, all nations be marked
with the mark of the Beast. So that in all the jungles, all the bush, all the mountains, men should be
hunted like wild beasts, penned like cattle, driven in flocks, kicked and whipped, yoked in plantations,
harnessed to black toil in mines, shipped in the hold to be sold and consumed on other continents.
So that all the kingdoms of the world should be mined and confounded with their glories and their
cults, their costumes and customs, their songs, dances and legends, their native freedom and original
genius. So that it should all crumble into the dust of utilitary drabness, so that in the place where the
forest and the deep tam-tams resounded, a zone of shanties and reinforced concrete should send up
smoke and confess to the broad light of day that Western Civilization is a disease of the earth.
The great terrible thing came about quietly, almost without any show of force. By flashing glass
beads at them, by duping their simplicity, by taming them with promises, inoculating them with a taste
for alcohol, exciting them to fight one another, the mercantile powers completed the break-up of the
nations.7
7
That Christian religion has spread in the wake of Colonization is due to Gods vigilance, for saints have arisen and fought
against the current, and the Devil himself testifies to Him. In the same way, the far from catholic roman conquest opened
the way to the apostles and prepared the papal Seat for Peter. This is used as an argument to justify Rome by the contrary
of Rome, but if Rome had not existed, the word of God would have found other ways. And now that everywhere colonial
empires are crumbling, we have unmistakable evidence of how much better it would have been for the honour of Christ and
the lasting conversion of the coloured peoples if His word had reached them by other means.
50
This is how one of the five great Races of humanity, that of the Red Indians, too wary to let
themselves be seduced, too noble to surrender, has been almost totally exterminated. Another, the
Black, is almost everywhere held in subjection and trampled on. The third, the Yellow Race, already
badly harmed, has reacted and responded with implacable hatred. And the fourth, the Brown Race, is
taking the same road. The latter two will soon, and the others sooner or later, get rid of theirs oppressors,
but will they be cured of their contamination? For hatred is also degradation. And if their hatred leads
them to adopt against their enemies the very methods they have copied from them, will they be able to
rid themselves of degradation by technique?
The Christian philosopher I have quoted is led to wonder whether all our technique is not, in a
certain sense, a technique of degradation. It seems to him that it cannot be otherwise for the people who
profit from its facility without being able to understand it and thereby raise themselves to its height.
If there is any truth in this observation, it becomes clear why technocracy and the negative philosophy
it is based on prove still more corrosive for races which can only submit to them passively or render
themselves abject and ridiculous by aping them.
But his observation does not go far enough, for the people the most capable of entering into the
spirit of technique are also degraded by it, all the more indelibly because in secret for, as we have seen,
technique is in itself a subversion of the Spirit, a degradation of original Knowledge and of Ancient
Wisdom.
17.
Of the Most Sacrilegious of Games
Now is the time to consider the most sacrilegious of mock games, the one that hides under the title
of Disinterested Scientific Research.
Disinterest is proper to the man of God, the inspired artist, the hero, the charitable benefactor, but
it is also proper to a good player, in that he is interested in the game only. Even the roulette player, for
whom gambling is a devouring passion, is the very contrary of a miser.
The disinterest of the researcher costs more than nights in the Casino.
The stake is not only millions of dollars, but millions of lives, the survival of the species and the
planet.
But the riddle is too enticing for his curiosity. The long calculations, the patient manipulations, the
sudden discoveries which are the lucky strokes of solitary play have something of the excitement and
the dream state induced by drugs. The magic circle of the game keeps all his faculties suspended and
imprisoned.
A famous wise man of Gottingen, stumbling against a square root or a cyclotron, fell flat on his face
in the street. The passers-by rushed to pick him up. But he took offence at their indiscretion. Cant
you see that I am reflecting? he shouted.
Well, it was obvious enough, fools that we are! His great fall should have made clear to us too the
direction his thoughts were taking.
The cosmic upheavals that result from his discoveries are obvious to the scientist, but only in the
abstract. If their possibility gives him a shock, he is exalted rather than restrained by it, because of
the latent, instinctive, infantile aggressiveness which finds an outlet in all games. So much for the
subconscious.
As for his conscience, the Devil takes good care to lull it to sleep by murmuring with the worlds
myriad voices, Science is good in itself. Some say that technique is neutral, but to tell the truth it is
51
always good, good for evil as for good. You are pure. The ends science is turned to are the business of
whoever uses it. Are you going to strike at their freedom to use it well or ill? Are you your brothers
keeper? You are above the scrum, above judgement. Like the gods, you hold life and death in your
hands.
Nevertheless, this angel of purity needs a lot of money. Apparatus, installations and libraries are
expensive toys. Between lofty disinterest and Big Interests, overtures take place, then they merge
indissolubly.
In short, the Government and Big Business share the prostitute.
But the scientist is not the only one struggling with his problem, his puzzle, his game of skill and
patience. There are the other players, all his dear colleagues whom he must catch out and catch up on.
What does foul play matter? Any means is good, so long as he gets there.
Where?
Further ahead!
But whats the goal?
Still further ahead!
And in the end?
Further ahead than the others!
And so it happens that they go further than they wanted to, because there is no goal, no direction,
no point of arrival.
But there is an end the fall.
Scientific rivalry is getting to be an international sport. An ecstatic audience is invited to the circus
of the terrestrial Orb to watch the Pluto-crackers competition8 or the game of rockets versus sky. And
the gaping and staring crowd admire Sputniks and Mooniks and see nothing.
The rage and despair of those who have failed to be first to spit their pellet at the moon is as comical
as the glory of those who say they have done it.
He laughs best who laughs last. You are moonstruck, my friends. But you dont know what its all
about. But youll see what youll see when the moment comes to stake all.
It goes without saying that these remarks and others on Science have no bearing on the human
sciences such as history, archaeology, philology, the study of ancient texts, arts and sciences which
remain free from non-philosophical or immoral uses.
All sciences, moreover, beginning with medicine, remain pure in one aspect. Among the scientists,
there are some who have guarded themselves, and Dr. Faust does not always sign the Pact explicitly.
Some are dupes and victims of the Devil rather than his mercenaries and henchmen.
Poor Einstein, for instance, humble, guileless and gentle, recognizing on his deathbed the fruit of
his tree and uttering a cry of horror on the brink of the abyss, a supreme warning to those he has led
there.
Eighteen German scientists refused to sell the world to death. Others have hesitated and sometimes
resisted and protested.
Moreover, the treason against the Spirit in which most scientists are involved cannot be imputed to
8
Plutonium bombs. Pluto is the god of Hell.
52
them personally. It is the sin of all our world.
18.
Of the Degradation of Work
Of all the damage caused by the excesses of technique, the most sinister is no doubt the degradation
of human work.
Never has the nobility of work been more talked of than in this century. Never before have so many
Workers Holidays been instituted. There has even been a World Revolution in the name of Workers
Rights. In the heat of the political coconut-shy and the verbal brass-band that accompanies it, it has
barely been noticed that the noblest crafts have disappeared, from Royal Architecture to pottery. Older
than history, they have vanished with their secrets, their science and their mastery. The work of the
hands has become unnatural and meaningless, chopped to bits. This process of breaking up and finally
doing away with mans work is carried out by machines and is called Industry.
19.
Of Mechanized Industry, another great game

This is where we come to the last species of mock trade.
The big-businessman does nothing to deserve the title of Patron9 which means Father of a family,
or master of a workshop, accomplished in the practice of his art. He is a mere player, like the merchant.
Mechanized industry is a game with rules, and a game of chance, requiring teams trained like
soldiers, and hardboiled, cunning leaders, to deal with competitors, fluctuations of the market, credit,
exchange, customs and income tax, colonial enterprise, the latest scientific inventions and the foreign
policy of various nations. Among so many factors of world importance, bodily toil has only the humblest place. It is just one sort of merchandise among other means of production, one of the cheapest
when supply is abundant thanks to the pressure of want.
But it is nevertheless a liability that has to be reduced especially since other players, the Professional Revolutionaries, have turned popular discontent into a force capable of hoisting them to power
by overturning Business.
When workers threaten to stop work in order to obtain sufficient pay, business managers respond
by buying a machine which replaces hundreds of them. The machine is said to have been invented in
order to save men labour. These are honeyed words. The truth is that it was invented to serve holders
of capital and to save them their workers pay.
Consequently, unemployment is not an accidental result of the introduction of the machine into
factories but its very purpose.
In vain do the defenders of the working class keep up rates of pay, they cannot force industry to
take on useless people. These fighters for equality exert themselves so successfully that wage-earning
becomes a priviledge and there is a growing sub-proletariat of workless workers.
Work that cannot be done away with by the machine is dominated by its niggling tyranny, broken
up and put into chains. Man is reduced to serving the machine and becoming a sub-machine. His work
is no longer tiring, but exhausting, maddening in its repetition, boring in its monotony. Work exacts
from human beings less and less strength, less and less skill and intelligence, so that whoever gives up
to it every day of his life becomes less and less strong, less and less skillful, less and less intelligent, yet
9
Le Patron in the original French text, i.e. the boss. (Translators note)
53
less and less conscious of his degeneration. Condemned to unemployment, the specialized that is to
say, deformed worker is nothing but an odd part thrown on the waste heap. To prevent his troubling the
peace, the government finds itself forced to give him his keep and for that purpose, to redouble taxation
and bring about ruin which augments the number of the kept.
20.
Of Degradation by Control
Some people think that by complete, severe control, economy can be coordinated, and corrupt
practice cut out. The Liberal Regime could indeed get rid of its fever by dying. The active, inventive,
wily Merchant can be crushed by the weight of the inert Civil Servant, anxious to cling to his post.
To the jumping parasite of the flea type, one may prefer the parasite stuck in ones flesh, like the tick
species. Then permits, licences, certificates, tickets, cards, stamps, visas and mountains of papers will
bar all roads and block the horizon. Then small and great in queues will go a-begging at desk-windows
for permission to live. Then ships will crust up in the harbors, stock rot in railway stations and public
waste replace and surpass all the past excesses of personal profit seeking, just as bureaucratic remissness
will supplant the injustice of tyrants.
21.
Of the Degradation by Leisure
Others continue to think, in spite of the lessons of experience, that all you have to do is to let things
slide for it all to come right in the end. Although crises have been multiplying for a century, they are
passed off as growing pains. In the long run, what is called overproduction will become low-priced
abundance, to the satisfaction of all. What is called unemployment by spreading to all will become
leisure and pleasure! Our civilization of brainless players and weakened workers has taken to dreaming
of an artificial, mechanized paradise where everyone will be set free from work, machines will do it
for us, and all that remains to be done is to regulate the distribution of goods and the organization of
leisure.
The thing is not so new as one might think. One of the sights presented by the decadence of Rome
was a whole people lounging and yawning under the arcades and shouting for Panem et Circenses. In
English: the Dole and Organized Leisure.
To what can the final replacement of Work by Play lead? Can it be leisure, even organized,
educational and over and above all compulsory leisure? We know enough about the nature of Play to
foresee the answer.
Since perpetual leisure ensures the rapid degeneration of the idle class of any society thanks to
sloth, vanity and debauchery, what else can one expect for the entire people than abysmal degradation?
To speak of delivering man from work is to speak of delivering him from his deliverance.
But let us not be too alarmed about a state of things which may never come to pass and cannot last.
For it is impossible that the people, one they have been admitted into the Paradise of Play, will not find
it better fun to set fire to the whole thing.
54
22.
Of the Great Wrath
The great wrath of working people is what threatens us today. It threatens to put an end to the game.
This people is not a people, but a mass; its work is not human work but a task hacked and chopped up
by the machine and its life is sold by the day and by the hour. And just as in work the people depends
on whoever directs its work, in revolt it will depend on whoever directs its revolt.
Then it will be the workers turn to play and the machine-like men will play with machine
guns and grenades and their uniformed Commisaries will move into the Emperors palaces. But overdelightful games dont last.
One morning the workers will have to get back to their work, under the stern looks of their new
masters. Their masters will have all the land, all the money, all the machines, all the weapons, the army,
the police, the press, transport, and the navy in their hands and power of life and death over each of the
workers.
The middling players will have gone back to earth. The irritating spectacle of their talkative and
boastful prosperity will have vanished. But victory over them may turn out to be just as futile as they
themselves are. For the workers, saddled as before with thankless and obscure tasks, as before will
receive only the slightest fraction of the goods they have produced, and will be more than ever liable
to taxation, mobilization and deportation. And as always, they will be ready to provide for and to exalt
their oppressors.
Their masters will conserve the sober and hardworking demeanor fitting for the concealment of
their game. Their game will be that of their imperial forerunners, namely, conquest.
And the workers will forget their bondage and their misery in their enthusiasm for their masters
game which will consist in waging a war of conquest against all the peoples of the earth. The War will
be called, Deliverance of all the Workers in the World.
23.
The Devils Game
I have been speaking of the game and not of cheating; of soldiers, not of robbers; of merchants, not
of thieves; of industrialists, not of forgers; of politicians, not of despots.
The great evils I have been describing do not come from the wicked, but from decent, law-abiding
people.
They and their laws play the game of the Prince of this World.
24.
Of the Game of Evil and Nothingness
Play is conscious shamming and voluntary vanity. But how is it possible not to stop being wrong
when you know you are wrong?
I achieve the impossible by a thousand tricks, Ill show you, answers the Spirit of Play.
Why?
Because I want to, and because I couldnt care less about your Whys!
So Play is at the limit between innocence and sin.
55
Its innocence lies in its ignorance of Good and Evil and its incapacity for one or the other because
it has no grip on reality. Its innocence is its suspension in emptiness and its absence of mind.
But absence of mind is the inversion of Spirit, torn away from truth and turned to pleasure.
This would make of it the height of sin, the sin against the spirit, for which there is no forgiveness.
But the weight of such a condemnation cannot be borne by a trifle.
Moral fault is canceled by the nothingness of play.
But this very nothingness is sin in its purity.
For in play, the spirit deliberately turns away from Truth to give itself up to illusion, turns away
from plenitude to rejoice in vanity, turns away from God to give itself up wholeheartedly to nothingness.
And this is truly sin. Beyond good and evil, at the source of good and evil, at the origin of their
perpetual opposition, of our fall and of our struggle. Yes, this is truly sin.
Morality would be wrong to judge ill of play, for play deserves no judgement. It is not an act, but
vacancy between acts, the sigh of a wasted moment, a little froth, a bubble. It is right to have to pay
a good price for a good meal, but not for the smell that comes out of the kitchen vent,however good
it is. And in no court of law, human or divine, shall I be called on to answer for the dream I dreamt
last night, however bad it was. Nobody can disprove the alibi of nothingness in this case. But what is
the name of nothingness when it swallows up the whole being? It is called Evil. And the most serious
conclusion to be drawn from a study of play is that while play reverses the images of the world at will
and manipulates them without a care for truth, the world in its turn (not Gods creation but the Babel of
men) the world imitates play and gives itself up to the same reversal and manipulation of things for
the sole sake of excitement, caprice and pleasure and so rushes towards nothingness.
Which is how the feasts and glories of this world so easily take on the image of the Dance of Death,
the most fitting illustration of the title of this book.
25.
A Complementary Note on Work
By work, mans native infirmity becomes his strength. Mans infirmity is to be unable to find his
sustenance on the earth. Unlike other animals, he must provide for himself by work, and his double
infirmity is not to suffice for this by himself since his needs outdo his industry. He must therefore unite
with others for his work and from that union comes his strength and all his goods, and of all his goods,
the best is union itself.
Man has two other motives for union: the necessity for defence and the attraction of love. But
while Defence seals the union of a human group, it does so against other groups. The union is made
by common hatred and it separates and tears apart at least as much as it unites. The attraction of love
is based on mans most variable aspect: feeling, which may at any moment turn into its opposite. By
nature, love is capable of radiating over only a limited field such as that of the family or a circle of
friends. Even so, it rarely fills these narrow limits in a constant or satisfying way.
But work is a reason for union and a union of reason. It is not opposed to other forms of union but
corroborates them, for it justifies defence, and fortifies and widens love.
It is often said that work ennobles man. The saying resembles another namely, that Virtue is always
rewarded. Pedantic silliness where facts are concerned, but popular reminders of the requirements of
justice.
Noble in fact is whoever commands, and his first command is to be served. Noble whoever is served
56
by all and who serves none, so long as one cannot say he serves no purpose.
In every society, work is the characteristic of the low and servile classes.
Thus, since the Beginning, God says to the guilty Adam, In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat
thy bread. But Adams sons snigger behind Gods back and say to themselves, Well find a way of
eating our bread in the sweat of somebody elses brow.
Consider History. Are not happy people said to have no history? History is therefore the history
of our misfortune. To tell the truth, it is a long catalogue of murder, oppression and revolt. Gods
discontent growls throughout.
And His wrath seems aimed at these who honour Him as well as at those who deny Him and He
rains down calamities upon the good as upon the evil.
Perhaps because all, good and evil alike, flout the least of his commandments.
The least, but the first in time and the most ancient: "Thou shalt work to eat".
So small, so ancient is this least of the commandments that we forget it! And it is so generally
forgotten that nobody notices, and we do not know we are at fault.
This commandment fixes the human condition after sin: chastisement. Yes, but the chastisement of
a kind and loving Father, an instrument of purification and the beginning of redemption.
How, asks Tolstoy, can you observe the greatest commandment which is love God and love thy
neighbour as thyself if you have not observed the least of the commandments?
To love ones neighbour is to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
Thats what I do, says the rich man, by my alms and also by my purchases and the wages I pay
my workers. . .
Now not only do you feed and clothe no-one, but you demand to be kept for doing nothing. For it
is the work of others that feeds and clothes you. You pay the workers to get work out of them, or the
product of their work, but where do you get the money with which you pay them if not from them and
their work?
To work one must be strong and intelligent. But consider History and recognize that it is the history
of strong and intelligent men who found a means of not working, a means of forcing or inducing
somebody else to work for them.
Getting rich and seizing power, seizing the fruit of work without working, subjugating and taking
possession of the human beings who, by their toil, ensure them leisure and abundance, that is the
business of strong, intelligent men! And that is the whole of History.
But, you will say, getting rich and seizing power take some doing! Many try, but those who
succeed are rare and have to go to no end of trouble and worry! That is true, but it doesnt prove
that they work. There are other activities besides work. Play, for example. Or combat. Feverish,
exasperated, fierce activity which is not work but the very contrary of work. Now, getting rich and
dominating are tasks which belong to play and combat. Trade, industrial undertakings, speculation and
finance, chicanery and advertising, politics and diplomacy, war and plotting which are the ordinary
shifts by which people arrive at fortune and honours are competitions and games, not work. The
excitement of the passions, blindness, furious self-importance, trouble, ruin and disaster are the normal
product of such unnatural work, as we have shown throughout these pages.
But as none of the players who go in for these ferocious and sinister frivolities produces the goods
he dilapidates so gloriously, the burden of producing them falls twice, ten times, a hundred times more
57
heavily on the workers shoulders, for he works for himself and for all who do not work, works to satisfy
not only needs, but also the disorderly requirements of the game. Now the worker is the least armed, the
least privileged, the least fortunate, the least skillful of all, otherwise he would have found some means
of going over to the players side and would have seen how easy it is to gain millions, whereas for the
lowest of wages he must tire himself to death. That is how the man to whom all owe their bread and
their lives remains obscure and despised and toils in poverty. And the greater the wealth and splendour
of the civilization he supports, the lower will he be thrust down. Look at the bent labourer and think
of the clusters of human beings that hang from his members; think of the pyramid built upon his spine,
for he labours for the tax collecter, the constable, the scribbler, the banker, the speech-maker and for
those who sell their bodies, who eat little biscuits and chatter in drawing rooms, for the swindler and
the minister, the dancer and the President: he carries their Chateaux, their private hotels, their casinos
and their lackeys, their spies and their officers, their cars, their trains and their canons, on his back.
As there are no ladders in social climbing, whoever gets clear and rises can only mount on the
head and shoulders of those he thrusts down. Thus the hell of manual labour is created, not by divine
justice but by the callousness of man.
And it is not only by the weight of the heaviest, dirtiest, most loathsome and degrading tasks
those which all refuse unless forced it is not only by this weight that our inferiors are afflicted but
also by the shame of being vanquished and trampled under foot and by their thirst for revenge.
So long as this pressure and this seething and violence and revolt last, they will always erupt and
ravage the world with fire.
The violence that springs from hatred, anger or other evil instincts remains accidental and superficial. Its damage is limited, it is judged and repressed. The permanent cause of violence is injustice.
Injustice will perpetually give rise to revolutions but violence will not give rise to justice, and if the
workers hope to free themselves by striking down the noble, the rich and their servants, they are duping
themselves, for the politician, the policeman and the technician will take over in their stead and play
a harder game, grinding them down with such a heavy boot that they will soon long for the dancing
pumps of their former masters.
If the refusal of work is the source of all social trouble, it is a duty for non violent revolution to take
the opposite direction and to set forth the willing and deliberate acceptance of work, as an obligation
of justice. The first to take this step should be those who are benefiting by the system in force. Is it
difficult to say to oneself, I will not take advantage of what has cost others so much sweat and blood?
Advantage quickly turns sour when its undueness becomes sufficiently clear.
That is what Count Tolstoy did at the height of his fame, and what Gandhi did, although the son
of a minister, and himself a prosperous lawyer. That is what their disciples have done, by hundreds
and without much merit, for it is barely a renouncement. One renounces a possession or a right. But
one rejects what is unjust and vain. Unlike the Franciscans who sought the poverty of beggars, we
Gandhians who have another mission adopt hardworking poverty for the reasons I have given. And like
them, with the same astonishment, we discover in it perfect bliss.
For what we accepted as a hard but necessary burden, we now see as a gift of God and deliverance. All kinds of work, especially the hard work supposed to be stupid gives us powerful spiritual
nourishment. It is easy to pray while doing it, and meditate or sing, easy to put rhythm into it and
discover its signification. It gives us mastery of our bodies as well as health and balance. It clamps
down on disorderly passions and gags the gossiping imagination, puts us in tune with our companions,
strengthens the will and appeases the heart.
Nevertheless, the Kingdom and the garden are neither on earth nor in heaven if they are
not in our hearts. So the first work of all is work on ourselves, the cultivation and the cult of the
58
Only Necessary One and daily weeding of that bindweed, the Greed of Gain and of that luxurious and
sometimes prettily flowering growth, Absentmindedness.
26.
Horror and Contempt of Work
The reason for war since the age of cave-dwellers has been the horror and contempt of work which
stem from this principle of the Science-of-Good-and-Evil: i.e. it is not so advantageous for man to draw
his sustenance from the earth by means of a tool as from another man by means of a weapon.
To pillage and harvest at one sweep the fruit of several centuries of a whole nations work is all
very well. But most of the plunder goes up in smoke. Now, capture men, and its all profit. Chain them
to work, and all their descendants with them; then we are the victors, and ours are the spoils! Ours the
orgies and the games, and one of the games is rushing off to subjugate other people.
Whence slavery.
The only aim, the only gain in slaves work is to do as little of it as possible without being whipped:
while for the conqueror, lifelong slavery and hard labor take the form of military obedience.
Thus the work evinced returns and redoubles on both sides. The slave bends his back and crawls
until the hour of revolt and revenge, and war springs from the slavery that sprang from war.
Another supplier of slaves is the fear of war.
When the Roman Empire came to an end, free men recommended themselves to the man of arms,
the lord, for his protection, which he magnanimously granted by putting them to work on his land.
Whence serfdom.
Yet another supplier of slaves: want.
Whence wage earners or democratic serfdom.
Other suppliers: fear of hard work and isolation in the countryside, fear of the uncertainties of
independence.
Thus, in late modern times, poor and rich in great number have been seen recommending themselves to the government for protection and slavery.
Anxiety to avoid work and get the neighbor to shoulder it is the origin of endless work aggravated
by endless struggle. The aim is no longer to satisfy needs but to outdo the rival. The winner will be
entitled to possession. His will be the good things of life while he sets the dispossessed to work.
Then, one day, the workers declare war on the possessors, and their efforts to repulse slavery result
in reinforcing power and enforcing slavery.
Finally, horror and contempt of work find their most elaborate expression in the invention of machines as an irresistible means of subjugating the worker, crushing free craftsmanship out of existence,
getting rid of the rebellious worker and replacing him, and devouring, then spewing out the submissive.
The Science-of-Good-and-Evil teaches man to deliver himself from work by means of the machine, and
from life by means of an explosion.
Mans elementary needs are four: bread, clothing, a roof, tools.
To be free of these is at first to reduce them, then to satisfy them by the simplest means: the work
of the hands.
God and nature have put between what the mouth asks for and what the hands can do such a
59
measured link that the most cunning and difficult readjustments cannot restore it once it has been broken.
Where one mans arms are not enough, the happy necessity arises of coming together and sharing,
sharing the work each according to his strength and talents, sharing the fruits of work each according
to his needs.
It is no use spending another thousand years scratching our heads and squirming, thinking up new
schemes or breaking one anothers heads to find another way out: there is no other.
But naughty children pretend to be searching, working and reflecting while they continue to play.
27.
The Part of Play
By showing the importance of play in the most serious human affairs, it goes without saying that in
spite of the seemingly systematic nature of this analysis, it is not my intention to make it an exclusive
explanation of the great scourges, particularly war.
The profound cause of war lies in three things. Possession, Power and Justice which will be the
subject of the following chapters.
But since possession is a right to things, and power a right over men, and since the whole of
the rational animals activity is expressed in juridical terms, the three can be put under the heading of
justice.
The cause of war and of all wars, on both sides, is the spirit of justice. We have the right! We are
right! We have been wronged! There with or without reason, is the reason for war.
Justice, or rather, the impurity of mans justice, justice combined with the covetousness and pride
which are the essence of sin.
The rights claimed being neither in the order of nature nor in the order of the absolute, being
fictional and conventional and contestable and contested, their sacred sentences can always be juggled
with and this is where the devil takes a hand in the game.
The whole of this chapter on play can itself be regarded as play, an interlude, a sorry game, from
which even greed for gain is not lacking, greed for a gain of truth.
60
III.
Possession
and
the Possessed
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
(Matt. V. 3)
61
1. How the Knowledge of Good and Evil engenders Possession

Here a new chapter begins: matter reaches new heights. Up to this point, we have been on ground
level, considering Good and Evil in their raw, corporal state only, as Pleasure and Pain. But raised to the
plane of the Artificial and invested with imaginary forms, they now lend themselves to more advanced
combinations in the order of the Fall.
Whereas the Knowledge-of-Good, acquired from Original Sin, urges man into a systematic search
for pleasure which, the further he pursues it, leads him into ever greater perplexity, friction, frustration
and danger, the Knowledge-of-Evil (that is to say, fear of every loss and privation possible) surrounds
him with defence-works in which he remains imprisoned.
Fear of want is a product of the intellect. It cannot come from the senses since its concern is for
a lack, and a lack which is not felt but conceived as possible. It comes, therefore, from the evil of
knowing. And it covers everything human with defences called Possession.
To possess is not a natural gift but a social and a rational fact.
The possession of goods concerns not only the owner and the object owned but also all the nonowners who must acknowledge that they are excluded from it. Now, while it is a social fact, its negative
and separative character should be noted at the start. For it is indeed ownership that has made the earth
bristle with barriers and walls and raised all kinds of visible and invisible obstacles between men.
If it is the work of reason, we can only wonder at the irregularity of its proliferation, and wherever
it abounds, it is called Fortune, which means chance, the opposite of reason.
Truly it is the bitten fruit of Knowledge. And already we are becoming accustomed to see the
Serpents promises reversed as they are fulfilled.
2. How Possession engenders Want

Possession, being a thing of reason, has general value, but since reason in this case comes in the
train of the Fall, Possession generalizes its opposite: Want.
Want and Opulence are the two sides of the same coin.
In fact, to possess means to exclude, or else means nothing at all.
No treatise on Economy or Philosophy could explain or demonstrate the nature of Possession more
clearly than a board bearing this simple inscription: PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT!
Even if Nature provided every one of us with all we need, fear of want, which is vague, knows no
limits and drives each of us to endless accumulation, would always result in bringing about want and
62
thereby justifying fear, in a vicious circle.
By a trick of our Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil, excessive prudence creates danger, and excessive
greed, dearth.
That some want to possess is enough for all to be forced to earn in order not to die. Thus a wrong
makes that wrong a need and a right.
But the want that wealth creates is necessary for its maintenance. Its is obvious that the value of
the coin in my pocket depends entirely on its absence from someone elses pocket. If nobody lacked it,
nobody would want it and it would not be of any use even on the dung heap.
Now, if a man is the only rich person in the midst of a poor people, he is considerably richer that if
he were surrounded by rich neighbours and he has more means at his disposal of becoming richer still.
He has also a clearer awareness and a fuller enjoyment of his possessions.
Enjoyment of a good is just a plain, natural fact; but the enjoyment of wealth is properly a
knowledge-of-good-and-evil and of good by evil, an enjoyment heightened by calculation and doubled by contrast. The specific enjoyment of wealth is the enjoyment of enjoying what someone else is
deprived from enjoying.
Moreover, it is not at all necessary to enjoy what one has, to enjoy the thought that others do not
have it. This satisfaction, as purely speculative as it is negative and false, is called Pride. And pride is
the colour of riches as yellow is the colour of gold.
3. Why a Good is called a Good

A good is a possessed object that is a cause of enjoyment.
Past enjoyment is no longer anything. But the object recognized by reason as a good keeps its
name forever. The good thenceforth takes on objective consistency which all may observe and all must
acknowledge. The quantity of good condensed in the object is even measured with precision.
This measurement is called value. To human reason is it given to rise to judgements of value.
Indeed, no animal is capable of showing as much interest in the object of future, or merely probable,
or just possible, or even improbable pleasure. No animal shows as much, if not more interest in an object
than in what satisfies its present need. No animal is capable of cluttering itself with an object that once
served it but no longer serves.No animal is capable of cherishing an object for the sole reason that it
is difficult for anyone else to possess. No animal is capable of getting pleasure from an object for the
good reason that other people like it but cannot have it.
Indeed, a very high degree of the Knowledge is necessary for so much refinement of absurdity.
Yet reason looks upon possession as necessary and upon wealth as good, and morals respect and
approve property.
4. The Malice of Wealth

Possession is thought to favour love. Indeed, according to common opinion, it is indispensable to
the foundation of a marriage. The rich man surrounds himself with high walls and vigilant guards so
that the gates may be thrown open to his bride, to a chosen friend, or to some guest bringing a message
63
from a distant kinsman. And even so that the scullery door may be opened to the poor man who has
come on behalf of God.
But to speak frankly, wealth is a direct offence to suffering humanity, whom it rejects one and all.
It shuts off from the wealthy the very sight of the evils of which their wealth is partly the cause, and so
prevents them from giving, even when they are of a compassionate nature.
It reduces their love to the whim of this or that preference, and makes them crave for praise and
expressions of gratitude, while their charity merely adds a decorative element to the summit of their
self regard.
No-one can love his neighbour until he has made himself poor, for only at that price can he meet
his neighbour face to face and know him in the experience of his need.
But how can you love someone you do not know?
Wealth is concerted ignorance of ones neighbour.
***
If we must be poor in order to love our neighbour, what, you may ask, shall we be able to give?
Will our charity not be empty-handed?
All who have made themselves poor for the spirit could tell you that they see for themselves what
is to be done to help, support, warm, feed, heal, enlighten and save. For charity comes from the heart,
not from the purse.
If someone standing on the deck of a ship caught sight of a man drowning, and contented himself
with looking the other way, his behaviour would be considered criminal.
Now, that is just what the wealthy all do. Or at least, those among them who do not send the
shipwrecked man to the bottom with the stroke of an oar.
That this sight, open to all eyes, should go unseen, is one of the most astonishing and significant
features of the knowledge with which the Serpent, that fascinator, has gratified mankind.
5. The Wretchedness of the Rich

They have eyes not to see, and their understanding is darkened by the hardness of their hearts.
I once met a wretched man who was losing his life gaining money.
Why do you do it? Why, for heavens sake, if you cant even find the time to spend and enjoy
it?
I have a son, he explained. I have to sacrifice myself for him.
Next year, I met him again, to condole with him. His son was dead.
He shed no tears. He had already forgotten, for he had no time to think. He had just doubled his
turnover.
***
Have you noticed how insects busy themselves with their grubs? With what artistic neatness and
untiring motherly care?
64
Now, with a pincers, remove the egg from before their eyes, and replace it with a tiny grain of sand.
Then observe how they nurse this, wrap it up for winter and prepare choice meats for its awakening
just as if they were human beings!
So that, having eyes, they see not.
***
But what about that most feared of wealthy men, that hungry-looking rich man who depredates like
death why does he deprive himself?
To pile up coins, pin notes together and add zeros to the total of his columns.
Although he extorts money from everybody, it is not so much for love of money (he does nothing
with it) as for hatred of mankind. He shows his hatred by taking, just as others show their love by
giving.
Besides, he hates himself just as much as he hates others, and oppresses and frustrates himself with
the same inhuman harshness, thus carrying out the punishment for his crime, which is one crime more.
But he smiles to his wealth, which is the nourishment of his hate. Every coin in his keeping is a
joy withheld from someone else. To handle his treasure is to feel the power in his hands, the power to
obstruct, deviate and stifle.
However, he despises other people too much to boast of his great priviledge, and mistrusts them
too much to expose himself to envy. Therefore he hides his treasure under the ground and with it buries
himself.
***
They have laid in the tomb of the king his most beautiful diamond.
Who now possesses the jewel?
***
Hi man! What do you have?
A lot of money.
What do you do with it when you keep it?
I count it and count on it. I know Ill get something out of it. So I count it again and look at it.
Do you look on it as something very useful?
Yes, very useful!
When is it of use to you?
When I spend it.
And when you spend it, do you have it?
***
65
There are wealthy men of weight and wealthy men of no weight.
The one I am talking of was of no weight at all.
Wealth enables those who enjoy it to gratify their whims. His whim was to do nothing.
To acquire his wealth, all he had had to do was to be born.
His only business was to spend it.
He managed to avoid fatigue and worry by guarding himself from all work and any undertaking.
He managed to avoid the contagion of sadness by keeping the wretched out of his sight.
He managed to avoid tears and trouble by guarding himself from loving.
He managed to pass from pleasure to pleasure without accident and almost without interruption.
Then, one day, he unexpectedly killed himself.
People were astonished. They searched what hidden event could have caused such despair.
But in vain. His friends knew that he had been dead for a long time, wandering in the shallow hell
of endless boredom.
Boredom is the void found by the seeker who wants to lose himself in pleasure.
The heart, dissipated by pleasure, crumbles into dust.
Every distraction distracts a particle from his Being. Boredom is the mean abyss of meaninglessness.
***
And that poor Poor Man!
Possessed by the wealth he does not possess.
Gnawed, devoured by want that is an imaginary evil.
Ill with someone elses good.
All the too-much others have makes him vomit.
Not that he is hungry: he has no appetite.
He has no taste for what he has.
To steal does not enter his head. Hes honest, he is!
Gifts he will not accept, for he is proud!
If by a sudden stroke of luck he were suddenly to become rich, goodness knows what he would do.
He himself would not know what to do or say.
That sort of thing always happens to somebody else!
He stares straight at the pretty woman stepping out of the car. He fixes on her his deep, burning
eyes.
At her breast where pearls gleam, he stares straight, his deep eyes burning with hate.
***
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Of all magicians, the rich man is the one who has made the most advantageous pact with the Devil.
He has bought the Devil.
He has put him in his pocket.
And now he holds in his hands the signs, spells and pentacles that bring good things in abundance
and make men smile or die, and women sigh.
He can buy everything: the earth and the fruits thereof, travel and foreign skies, adventure or repose,
honours and titles, political importance, music, books, picturess, statues, gardens, feasts, dances and the
dancing girl, health with drugs, youth and beauty with apparel and cosmetics, oblivion with drink, love
with gifts, good repute with alms, immortality with a tomb and happiness by selling his soul.
***
To buy something to buy and sell, they have sold their lifetime and all their thoughts, till in the end
there is no-one left to take advantage of the bargain.
The happiness of the rich is in Having. Woe, then, to Being!
6. How Possession engenders War

To possess is to insure oneself against need and to protect oneself from every cause of disturbance.
It is to have no need of anyone and to be safe from other peoples interference or demands.
But if property is to defend us, we must defend property, and to defend it is to wage war.
More often than not, it is because of their failure to grasp this ineluctable connection that partisans
of peace, whose sects are increasing in number, remain powerless in spite of their good will. They
refuse to take up arms, and they attack the army, which is the instrument of war, but they ignore the
cause of war and do nothing to remove it.
I am not saying that possession is the sole cause of war. But it is the strongest and has the greatest
justification, (insofar as possession can be justified).
The sound and fury of the reasons that accompany the outbreak of war may very well obscure this
fundamental truth: that war springs from mans attachment to his possessions, be they great or small.
A simple case will show us the evidence.
Let us suppose a pioneer has tilled land he has won from the desert or the forest. He digs up
tree-roots, levels the ground, waters, ploughs and sows. And on harvest-day, his crop is plundered.
What will he do the following year?
Even if he is willing to begin all over again, he cannot: he has to subsist.
And what is to prevent robbers from doing the same thing year after year, and even carrying off his
wife and children as slaves?
My guess is that he will arm himself, or leave that dangerous area and settle in the heart of inhabited
country. Which is not solving the problem, but leaving it to others to solve, because his peaceful
enjoyment of property in the heart of inhabited country is due to an army that protects it from invasion
and a police force that keeps him safe from robbers and trespassers.
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So that if he refuses to pay taxes, or serve in defence of the frontiers, while enjoying undisturbed
possession, he is in the heart of peace like a worm in the core of a fruit.1
The conscientious objector sets up for a martyr, while his neighbours take him for a traitor and
a coward. His is the highest kind of courage, which is to think the opposite of what everybody else
thinks, to face contempt with dignity and hatred with calm. Those who call him mad are silenced when
he points out that one cannot admit two justices, a spoken justice that is universal and unchanging,
and enacted justice that is local and changing, a justice for times of peace and a justice for times of war,
a justice for ones own people and another for strangers, a justice that proclaims killing a crime, another
that makes it an obligation and an honour.
To settle the issue, if you are wise, you need ask only one thing;
Whether the man who refuses to handle a gun refuses with the same indignation to inherit or lay
claim to property or to accept state protection of his belongings, since it has been proved that, without
protection, nothing at all would be his own (not even his wife or children, or his freedom, or even his
own body);
Whether the man who expresses such horror of war feels just as strongly about the things that make
war inevitable;
Whether he refuses all injustice, beginning with that from which he himself benefits, lest he find
himself in the position of a man who refuses to pay the bill after having eaten and invited his friends to
eat;
Whether the conscientious objector is conscious of all that his refusal implies.
If he is, he will object to peace almost as much as to war, and acknowledge that war is the name
agreed upon for war that breaks out, and peace the name for war that always stays hidden.
If you want peace, do not prepare war.
If you do not want war, repair peace.
For that, become poor.
7. From Possession which is Power or Sovereignty to Possession which is

Enjoyment
Plenitude of possession is sovereignty.
The sovereign possesses as much land and other goods as he can conquer and defend.
Here, possession and power are one. Besides, it is the same word.2
Here, right is might.
Here, the connection between possession and war can escape no-one.
***
Property is a degraded species of sovereign possession, diminished exactly by half.
1
The reader should not consider this as an unconditional justification of Defencive War neither as an attack upon conscientious objectors, but to amend the argument, should take into account the preceding chapter.
2
It does not seem far-fetched to see the etymology of possess (possidere) as posse sidere, i.e. to be able to sit, to be able to
settle.
68
The proprietor still has right of occupation and use, but no longer has the right of armed defence,
which is now transferred to the nation and its leader.
This is to avoid war between all in all places and at all times; to strengthen the nation and to create
areas of relative peace.
Nowadays, the right to take up arms ourselves in defence of our property and even of our own
persons has been entirely replaced by the right to resort to the police force or courts of law when the
need arises, a right which entails voting, taxpaying and military service.
That the latter, which is nothing less than proof of total enslavement and an apprenticeship to death,
should nowhere be looked upon as a calamity and a punishment, is truly astonishing. But men hasten to
it with glee. The fact is that to bear arms, instead of being a painful and burdensome duty, has always
been an enviable privilege, a share in sovereign dignity.
***
To dispossess the possessors of their arms has taken centuries of effort and bloodshed.
The transition from sovereign to merely proprietary rights took the form of the feudal regime, in
which there was no regular army. But every inch of the land was armed, in that every man himself
carried out the defence of his own fields, his burgh or his castle. The king was he who rallied them all
to his banner in a common campaign. None received arms from the king. Each found his own and took
his rank according to the size of his domain, over which his sovereignty was almost complete, like that
of the king over his. His domain was simply smaller, and often barely smaller. Sometimes, the king had
to turn aside from the enemy and swoop on one of his greater vassals to teach him obedience. Warfare
between neighbours drained the land like brooks, the kings war, like a river. It is the fate of brooks to
flow into a river.
At the other extreme, the slave. Arms are forbidden him: he has nothing to defend, being a part of
the possession to be defended.
In many regimes, the people has been strictly excluded from carrying arms. Far from relishing
such an advantage and liberation, it has always resented it as a mark of bondage, a deprivation and a
disgrace.
By putting into the army all men fit for service, the modern state has fulfilled an age-long aspiration
of the people: possessors and non-possessors are called alike to take their share of sovereignty. This
sinister alcohol still intoxicates them all.
***
Ho who fights has the right to possess.
He who possesses has a duty to fight.
The slave alone does not fight: he is possessed.
***
And you foreign mercenary, what do you fight for? to defend what?
What are you doing here?
69
Ah! I have it!
To sell your blood for a little pay.
***
Proudhons remark that Property is theft scandalized our grandfathers and became a household
phrase.
A harsh statement, that cannot be accepted without reserve. To be strictly truthful, one must go
further. One must dare to think, Possession is murder.
The compulsory murder called war.
8. Confusing oneself with the thing possessed

Fools that we are! What are we worrying about?
. . . I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye
shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. (Luke XII, 21-23)
But if I risk death to defend my goods, am I not preferring clothing and food to the life of my body,
without which clothing and food are worth nothing?
I admit that the life of the body depends partly on food and sometimes on clothing.
Even a wild beast will defend its lair to the death, and a dog shows its teeth if one makes a move
toward the bone it is guarding.
If only men could be as moderate as wild beasts! If only they could see as clearly as the ass or
the buffalo and discern what is necessary from what is frivolous, what is superfluous from what is an
encumbrance, what is excessive from what is overwhelming.
But the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil has given them eyes not to see what the very animals see.
9. The Resulting Exaltation and Disappointment

Wisdom teaches that As soon as men agree and are of one will, they become strong, happy and
free.
But the Science-of-Good-and-Evil, which is the venomous, crawling wisdom of the serpent, proposes another axiom: Confuse yourself with things under the sign of possession and you will aggrandize your person, your pleasure and your power accordingly, in spite of men and God.
It follows, in all serpentine logic, that man identifies what is his with himself, and by a stroke of
intelligence, incorporates all he possesses, whereupon he feels himself take on the dimension of a god.
He learns to love his belongings as himself, but a self all the more precious as it is prodigiously dilated.
Then possession, which was a thing of convention and reason, becomes carnal affection, passionate
doggedness.
How wretched and vulnerable the rich then are, straddling the seas, their organs exposed to all
weathers! For the wide world is full of hazards, and the slightest mishap makes them howl with pain
70
like a mutilation. An empty corner in the safe twists their bowels and gives them jaundice, a mistake in
reckoning makes them lose their reason.
What trouble for nothing! All that contrived torment, all that groundless anxiety, all that imaginary
grief, all those fictitious losses that affect the heart like real disease!
But of their own perdition, they feel nothing at all.
10.
The Bloody Consequences of the Confusion
No sooner have we accepted to risk our lives in defence of our property than, in all serpentine
morality, we feel authorized to kill whoever attacks it.
And how could we be condemned for preferring our property to another man s blood when we
already prefer it to our own?
The more of a logician and moralist one is, the better one knows how to deduce from a false premise
a series of irrefutable and outrageous affirmations.
But the logical sequence of all the theorems by the Science-of-Good-and-Evil concludes with death.
For All they that take the sword will perish with the sword, and whoever fights to keep his goods will
fall in the fight and lose both his goods and his life.
On Gods simple commandment Thou shalt not kill, a mountain of codes of honour have been
piled, one on top of the other, codes of law and codes of morals to teach us the thousand and one ways
of killing with a perfectly tranquil conscience.
More than half of crime is motivated by the spirit of lucre. But the wrong, the ruin and the homicide
condoned, recommended or demanded, in peace time as in war, by the morality of the century, is more
than double of the crime it condemns.
The fact is that the morality of the century is a branch of the Science-of-Good-and-Evil bent on
safeguarding our inheritance, the Fruit-of-Sin, that is to say, Lucre.
11.
What may be expected of the People and its will for Peace
It is usually said that the people hate war, while the rich and powerful want it. There can be no
doubt about this. It is obvious from the necessary connection between wealth and war.
There can be no doubt about it if the people means the poor. It is quite certain that in the eyes
of a serf in the Middle Ages, or a pariah in India, war is a game for princes, criminal and senseless
excess. Little does it matter who wins or loses, every man of arms whether he ravages the country as its
aggressor or its defender, is to him an enemy and a demon of a sort.
The usual conclusion is that when the peoples voice is at least heard in governments, it will enforce
its will for peace, and that every step toward democracy is consequently a step toward peace.
But it is of vital importance that all who want to serve peace should rid themselves of this delusion.
Otherwise, they will find themselves adrift in politics and confused with those who invoke peace
only to trap the simple-minded, not for the sake of peace, but for the success of their party.
The best way of freeing oneself from the snare is not to brandish opinions but to look at the facts.
And the facts exist: compulsory military service (a measure which the Ancient Regime found
71
impracticable, and inacceptable, not to say inconceivable) was established by the French Revolution.
By the introduction of democracy, the first step was taken toward total war. Those are the facts.
Thanks to the Russian Revolution, democracy took another step forward. That is why even women
are now armed.
Today, each of the two blocks boasts of being at the head of democracy. That is why each of the
blocks is preparing the best bomb.
It is impossible to ignore history to the extent of not recognizing that at all times and in all countries,
democracy endows war with particular popularity, ferocity and vileness. The Greek cities, Rome and
the Italian Communes of the Middle Ages were hotbeds of fierce and stubborn wars. They fostered and
gloried in that hatred and contempt of the enemy which every rule of chivalry, every tradition of nobility
wholly disdains.
Those are the facts, but what is the reason for them? The reason is one we already know: the
connection between war and wealth.
The popular regime has the effect either of multiplying small properties or of giving The Great
Number the impression that they have an equal share in the common wealth; whereupon possessive
aggressivity immediately takes possession of this multitude of new subjects.
The noble improvidence which was the privilege of the poor is frozen out of the hearts of the
people. The generosity that made them share some rare windfall with their neighbours withers as soon
as these goods no longer arrive by chance, but are due as a right. Gone, their philosophical indifference;
gone, with their poverty, their irony and disdain concerning public affairs. They now demand that the
whole on which their little share depends should be defended, and at the first alarm, they are ready to
howl and shed blood.
The mood for combat is in no way lessened by the meagreness of their share, being proportionate,
not to their wealth, but to the greatness of their attachment. Now the small are more attached to their
goods than the great: this can be observed everywhere and is easy to understand.
It would likewise be a mistake to think that collective possession engenders less aggressivity than
private property. War is always a defence of the common wealth. He who possesses nothing of his
own is more directly dependent on the common wealth and more immediately interested in its defence.
Communist Republics are therefore by necessity as military and bloodthirsty as the other democracies;
indeed, more so.
12.
Possession, a Vice
Possession is an artificial exaltation of the instinct of self preservation.
Similarly, the instinct of propagation can be exasperated into lust with very little effort on the part
of the Science-of-Good-and-Evil and can be made to act for nothing or against nature to attain sterility.
Now, it is the instinct of self-preservation, transposed on to the rational plane of self-interest, rights
and duties, that leads mankind to the passionate acceptance of war and consequently, of death.
72
13.
War between rich nations and poor
War is usually regarded as a renewal of barbarity, as vengeance wrought by deprived, primitive

nations upon the civilized and decadent, a kind of refreshment of History.
This has sometimes been the case, and the barbarian invasions are an instance. But History keeps
pushing in the opposite direction. The rich, civilized nation is nearly always the aggressor.
In the first place, the rich nation has the means of aggression: its weapons and methods annihilate
the bravery and resistance of the savage.
And of course however it may seem the rich find it just as advantageous to beat the poor, as
the poor the rich.
The civilized discover in wild countries riches of which their inhabitants are not aware, and they
know how to make these inhabitants slave and labour to exploit these riches, or serve as soldiers and
police thugs to maintain the slavery.
In this sense, it is true that the barbarity of war spreads civilization. And one of the most amusing
tricks of the civilized is to make the vanquished themselves believe that they have been beaten and
subjugated for their own good.
Until the day comes when the simple-minded surreptitiously turn clever, make use of the clever
who thought they were making use of them, to educate, equip and arm themselves at the expense of
their exploiters and finally throw them out.
When two equally advanced peoples fight, they may do so for various reasons. But when a wealthy,
civilized nation attacks a poor, uncivilized one, it is always for gain.
Thus profit-seeking produces war which produces slavery, and that slavery produces war, which
produces loss and ruin, so true is it that the Science-of-Good-and-Evil is a serpent that bites its own tail.
14.
How Possession engenders Slavery
But wealth has no need to hunt for slaves so far afield. Its preference for the savage, the Negro, the
foreigner is in no way exclusive. The mishaps and risks of overseas ventures and armed expeditions can
be avoided. For wealth has no difficulty and no scruples about subjugating a fellow citizen, a cousin or
a brother.
If, in a country where the whole of the land is owned, a man possesses a hundred or a thousand
times more than he needs, the result is that somewhere, probably a hundred or a thousand people have
nothing at all.
But never mind! The Science-of-Good-and-Evil is ready to solve the equation and will straightway
perform that elementary operation known as the imbrication of fortunes.
What will the man live on who has nothing to live on? On his work. Ah! theres something good,
something honest and normal! But how can he plough without land, or make something without a tool,
or subsist from one day to the next until the crop has been harvested or his work sold?
The others can get rich by exchanging their products, but he who has nothing can sell nothing but
himself.
Indeed, where can he get land, tools, a workshop and food if not from the owner of the fields, the
factory and the shop? Cap in hand, then, and with bowed head will he offer the humble service of his
73
powerful arms, for should the other refuse it, or merely delay, he risks being forced into vagabondage,
hunger, beggary and perhaps death.
The other generally has time and the choice. So he will decide at leisure. He will provide the
worker with conditions for work on condition that the direction and the fruit of the work are his.
The wealthy therefore appear as the providers, the leaders and the saviours of the poor in their
own eyes, in the eyes of the whole world, and even in the eyes of the poor, who feel perpetually in
debt and in the wrong and show it by signs of respect and readiness to serve. In general, they do so
with conviction, unless we happen to be dealing with some rare, eccentric character, or with a period of
exceptional trouble. Everybody, moreover, is aware that this homage has nothing whatever to do with
the behaviour or intrinsic value of its object. The species of thing to which it is paid is quite unknown
to nature, reason or the spirit; no animal can perceive it or smell it, and the sage has no knowledge of
it either. People call it Class Distinction, a social pretence which, be it said in passing, serves no social
purpose.3
One of the coils of the Science-of-Good-and-Evil which glitters as it twists.
In the eyes of right judgement, on the contrary, the perpetual debt and deficit are on the part of the
rich, for it is the poor who enrich the rich and the rich who impoverish the poor, and do their utmost to
keep them poor.
In fact, if the richest of men were reduced to his own means and could count on no other servant
than his hands, he could draw from his great possession barely enough to keep him from starving and
would have to admit that by nature, he is just as poor as the poorest.
He is a thousand times richer than others, only because a thousand poor men work for him. If he
gave each of them a thousandth part of what he gains by them, what would be left? If he gave each of
them a little more than the rate of pay enforced, he would run the risk of seeing the ungrateful wretch
go off and eat the fruit of a field cultivated for himself. It is by giving him as little as possible that he
best ensures his fidelity. To give him more than his strict due would not be generosity, but imbecility,
and even injustice. It would harm all the other possessors, endanger established order and jeopardize
the future. On reflection, it is better to throw a handful of coins into the cap of some beggar to whom
one owes nothing, and go ones way. So much easier is it to be generous than to be just. And no doubt
much less onerous.
15.
The Fraudulous Bankruptcy of Patrons and Philanthropists
The game of chess is said to have been invented in order to take an Oriental Kings mind off his
anxiety as he lay on his couch, nursing his war wounds.
The King was so pleased with the game that he summoned its inventor and promised him on oath
to grant him whatever he requested.
Put four grains of wheat on the first square, four times four on the second, that is to say, sixteen,
sixteen times sixteen on the third, and so on until the last. That is the reward I want from your Grace.
The King marvelled at the modesty of the learned man, but was somewhat disappointed, for he
would gladly have shown his favour by more strikingly generous gifts, such as horses, jewels and
palace. . .
Smiling, he ordered three or four sackfuls of wheat to be fetched. They were poured on to the
3
Unlike rank in the army, which is obviously a functional necessity.
74
chessboard which disappeared under the heap. But the beneficiary insisted on an exact reckoning.
The King came to perceive that to satisfy such exactitude, all the crops in his kingdom would not
suffice.
Checkmate to the King! said the man of learning, and laughed.
Checkmate to the greatness, the graciousness and the charity of all who try to muddle the game and
cover up their debt with a derisory profusion of inconsiderate gifts.
16.
Wealth, or Idleness
One of the principles of the Science-of-Good-and-Evil is that property is necessary to safeguard

the worker and the continuity of work.
If your field does not belong to you, someone else may come and reap where you have sown, it
says.
But the imbrication of fortunes, which is a general consequence of the same principle, has established that in a continuous, legal, regular and secular manner, he who reaps is precisely he who has not
sown or done any work other than that of being the owner of the field.
And it may be that the man who employs a hundred workers in his vineyard or his workshop earns
as much by doing nothing as his hundred workers do together, with all their strength and all their toil.
Yes, but he is the head, and a head is worth hundreds of hands.
Perhaps. Nevertheless, an owner has no need to be a head. Just as he has bought hands, so he
can buy intelligence and afford to have a manager, engineers, inspectors and foremen, and go off and
sleep or revel.
This is the case of the great absentee landlords, the society men who go in for perpetual holidays,
as it is of big and small shareholders, so-called because they are dispensed from sharing anything,
and even sometimes dispensed from any notion of the business from which they receive dividends.4
Sometimes the owner of a small field is its cultivator. But the owner of a huge domain never is.
Whence it may be deduced that the more you own, the less you work.
Which does not prevent the Science-of-Good-and-Evil from teaching that Wealth is justified because it is the fruit of work.
But the peculiarity of the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil is to deduce, without an error of logic or
arithmetic, Evil from Good and to bring forth Falseness from Truth without knowing how.
So the formula: Wealth is the fruit of labour, by algebraic conversion, has this corollary: The fruit
of wealth is idleness. A result verified by experience.
Wealth is the mother of idleness who is the mother of all vices, as we well know.
It goes without saying that a person of private means is a man who neither earns his living nor
serves.
Wealth is a right without duties.
4
Etymologically, what is to be shared.
75
17.
Wealth and Work
Thats not true! you will say. Or at least, its superficial. There is no necessary link between
wealth and idleness. On the contrary, I maintain that wealth is always a condition of work.
Even when a wealthy man is idle, you cannot say he serves no purposes; he serves to be served. He
serves to make money circulate, and the less it stagnates, the more it is worth. You know nothing about
political economy if you think that his extravagance is a loss or a waste: it enables the jeweller, the
dressmaker, the musician, the ballerina, the gardener, the poet and all kinds of tradesmen and workers
to earn a living; even the miner at the bottom of the pit gets his little share of the benefit.
But, far from being idle, the wealthy man is often a bossy boss, a busy businessman, a venturesome
promoter of business ventures, actively engaged in creating new opportunities of work for great numbers
of people.
Wealth is a condition of work, granted. But the definition requires a complement if we are to
agree. Wealth is a condition of other peoples work. Do you agree?
No! you will retort with noble indignation, the indignation of filial piety.
For, reader, did not your grandfather owe his fortune solely to himself and his work? Did he not
build it up penny by penny, saving out of his meagre pay?
Yes, but so long as your grandfather was putting the coins one by one into his sock, he remained
hardworking and poor, poorer than the worker who spends all his pay, and more hardworking, since he
had to earn money not only to feed himself but also to feed his sock.
And in those days, never once did it happen that he found one penny more in his sock than he had
put in. And so long as he did not spend his money, he lived as if he did not have any. For if he had spent
it, he would soon have had nothing left.
And yet, the day came when he could call himself a rich man. How did that come about? Because
he had a house, servants and carriages? Yes, but above all by this sign: he could thenceforward spend
without any diminution of his wealth.
By what magical spell, by the stroke of what fairy wand had his purse turned into a spring?
There is nothing magical or fabulous in your grandfathers history. He did not spend his treasure,
but he did not keep it either. He invested it. He made his fortune in a candle-making business, did he
not? He made a fortune, but never did he make a candle.5
18.
Three Reasons for the Divorce of Wealth from Work
It may be that work and saving went into the foundation of a fortune unless, of course, a stroke
of luck, or a stroke of cunning, or a stroke of lightning did so.
Even when work and saving lay the foundation of a fortune, there are two fundamental institutions
in our society which ensure by a legal, regular and time-honoured practice that he who spends and
enjoys is not he who worked and saved. These are Inheritance and Endowment.
On the other hand, pay, or the-sale-of-human-work-by-the-hour, puts the worker into a class, or,
more precisely, puts him outside every caste, and by a legal, regular and time-honoured practice makes
5
We tend more and more to separate property of any kind from work of any kind. Sigismondi. New Principles of
Political Economy, II chap. 2
76
him a slave, and that is how the separation of work from wealth is consummated.
19.
Three, seven and nine lucky men; three poor and three unlucky men
Three persons are free to make a fortune:
1. The industrialist;
2. The tradesman;
3. The financier.
Seven persons have an opportunity to succeed in a career:
1. The doctor;
2. The jurist;
3. The teacher;
4. The civil servant;
5. The administrator;
6. The military man;
7. The churchman.
Nine persons may dream of fame:
1. The artist or writer;
2. The scientist or inventor;
3. The engineer or architect;
4. The champion;
5. The explorer;
6. The war hero;
7. The philosopher or spiritual leader (wise or mad);
8. The prophet (true or false);
9. The politician or leader of men.
Three will always remain obscure and poor, but free:
1. The peasant;
77
2. The craftsman;
3. The vagabond (the latter alone is free of all hindrance and of all wealth).
Three will remain poor, obscure and slaves:
1. The servant;
2. The jobbing labourer;
3. The workman.
A brilliant career always entails a certain prosperity and even a certain obligatory ostentation.
Fame, when it comes, brings with it opulence of some kind.
But, for the seven, as for the nine, pecuniary success is not of prime importance. It is a condition
rather than the aim of their service. Only the first three on the list (the industrialist, the tradesman and
the financier) have no other goal, no other function and no other claim to glory than self-enrichment.
From this list, it seems that the beneficiaries of the regime outnumber those who undergo it, but it
is among the distinguished classes that distinctions abound all the more as numbers lessen, whereas
the mass of the people is crammed into the six lower levels.
This mass does all the hard work that nobody wants to do and from which everybody benefits.
But the torment and the ferment of our civilization is due to the imbrication of the fortunes of the
first and the last on the list. This is where the gear wheels grate.
20.
Marxs Capital, and Value as Work incorporated in objects
It is to Marxs credit that he pointed out this permanent scandal, and tried to give a human voice to
that grating of the gear wheels. It is to the credit of the Communists that they tried to put the machine
of injustice right by making it turn the other way.
To sum up Marxs The Capital in half a page and to translate into everyday language the series of
statements he develops in the weighty volumes of his argument, documentation, polemics, statistics and
research, let us say:
Human work is merchandise. It is found on the market at a price fixed according to the law of offer
and demand.
However, it is not a value like others, for the reason that, while other merchandise remains what
it is, human work is a value which produces others.
An object can be moved from here to there, can be sold dear or cheap, but its intrinsic value remains
the same, since the object remains the same. But when human work produces an object, it is that work
that gives the object all its value by making it useful: The work is therefore the unique source of its
value.
Those who measure value by price are victims of the money mirage: they attribute to gold and to
objects an intrinsic value. But the true value of an object should be defined and measured as a certain
amount of human work incorporated in that object.
78
The exact measure is the number of hours of work necessary for an average worker to produce the
object.
But then, what is the value of the work of an average worker? As for any other object, the time
necessary to produce it: the time it takes the workman to satisfy his needs.
Or half a day. And that is the price at which the manufacturer buys work, or rather, the capacity
for work (giving the worker a bare subsistence wage) but exacting from him a whole days work, and
the supplement of work he has extorted becomes the plus value by which he becomes rich. He is
therefore a parasite and a thief. . .
Just as whoever buys an object for one dollar, and without adding to it in any way, sells it for two,
is a thief. . . 6
21.
A remark that brings the whole thing tumbling down
Of course, remarks the author, work that goes into the making of a useless object is not work
and bestows no value on the object.
But the author does not notice that this simple and childish remark brings the whole theory on
which scientific socialism is founded, tumbling down.
Indeed, it must not be thought that the making of a useless object is an extreme case, impossible,
so to speak; not that it is the act of a madman in the clutches of an obsession. It happens every day,
in most diligently managed industries, that partially, or totally useless objects are produced: it happens
every time that merchandise is offered for sale and not bought. No object is useful in itself: it is useful
only in relation to its user. The buyer is therefore the sovereign judge of its usefulness and value, and
his veto is: the refusal to buy.
No sooner does it become fashionable to go around without a hat than millions of hats produced by
hatters become useless objects. Which does not mean that it required no work to make them, but that
all the long hours of work incorporated in them have added no value to their felt.
The falsity of this thesis springs from the materialistic philosophy on which it is based. Materialism
is an error which consists in treating the problem of life and of the spirit according to methods which
have proved their worth in the study of matter.7 Material things are set in motion by causes. A cause
comes from the past and pushes the event from behind as one marble drives another forward. The things
of life, human things above all, are moved by aims, and the aim is in the future and draws the event
toward it. A cause is a force: an aim is a direction, an idea, an image. All human things, economy
as well, for all that it is called material, are set in motion by aims. Man works in order to obtain
something of which he has an image, to satisfy a desire he recognizes or foresees. It is in relation to
that desire that the whole of economy takes form and that a value becomes a value. A thing has value
only if it is desirable on the one hand and difficult to obtain on the other. An object does not have value
because work has gone into its making and purchase. Work has gone into its purchase because it has
value, or will have.
Work, far from producing a value, can be said to exploit a value by producing abundance since, the
more objects it produces, the more their value diminishes.
6
It is true that Engels, Marxs authorized exponent, raises the question of commercial plus value apart from every
consideration of fraud or violence. However, although I have re-read the passage, I cannot see how, within the limit of Marxs
theory, Engels can attribute commercial profit to anything other than fraud.
7
Gandhi, Unto This Last
79
Note, in passing, that Marx constantly uses the word value to mean wealth. His inexact use
of elementary terms and fundamental definitions shows with what sort of economic science we are
dealing and with what sort of philosophy: not a study of the nature of things, not reflection, but
polemics.
22.
An average worker multiplied by n
If it is true that the value of an object is in reality only the sum-of-an-average-workers-hours-ofwork-incorporated-in-the-object, then I wonder what can be the value of a sketch of Rembrandts.
Yes, what number of hours of an average workers simple or composite work are incorporated
in a sketch of Rembrandts?
But is Rembrandts sketch in reality of any value at all?
If it is of any value, then we must conclude that Marxs theory is of none.
But, you will say, you must not confuse the aesthetic value of an object with its market value!
And dont choose an exceptional and complex example in order to confuse the issue!
My answer is that the example is exceptionally well chosen to show very simply that Marxs definition accounts neither for the aesthetic value not for the market value of the object.
I might add that the mere fact of applying these two adjectives to a noun implies that the noun has
a meaning that they can qualify.
To a number of objects, if not to all, several orders of values are applicable; moreover, these values
imply one another reciprocally. In the case of Rembrandts sketch offered for sale by auction, it is clear
that the aesthetic value and the market value are quite different things but relate to each other.
23.
Value as a Category
To take as current a word as value with its multiple, but clear and inter-related meanings, and
to impose on it a definition which confines it to economy alone worse still, to a particular system
of production, that of modern industry is to twist language and in consequence, to twist logic and
intellectual integrity.
For Value is nothing less than a category of universal Reason, on the same footing as Quantity or
Quality. Indeed, it is the very synthesis8 of Quantity and Quality, their fusion in a third term which
embraces both: the Quantity of Quality, the measure and degree of quality in the object or the person or
the work or the idea or, indeed in the merchandise.
Having stated, or rather, recalled these principles, or, to speak more simply, having re-established
the rights of language and the dictionary, we cannot fail to see that the game of Offer and Demand as
determining factor of the value of merchandise, is the sole scientific law and the sole basis of Economy.
Work-as-a-measure-of-Value is a doctrine which does not belong to Scientific Economy, but springs
from moral justifications of Wealth. Never, in any regime, has it brought about an actual measure of
Values, and the work token has not replaced money in Marxist countries. There, as elsewhere, money
8
A note for those who enjoy the puzzles of classical philosophy: I employ the term of synthesis in the Hegelian sense,
although Hegel groped for this synthesis and missed it like so many others (see his Logic); just as Kant, his predecessor,
missed it in his Table of Categories (see his Criticism of Pure Reason).
80
measures the value of work and work does not measure the value of money.
Moreover, the theory is not Marxs invention: it was borrowed uncritically from the English
Economists of the eighteenth century, and still has a great vogue even among non-Marxist theoreticians, in spite of the absurdity to which it leads.
24.
Value the Power of Good
Value is to Good what Power is to Strength: stored up in the depths, it waits for the time to come
into action, a plenitude so abundant that there is no room for all of it in the present or in a given place.
Dante calls God:
Il Valore Infinito.
Value is the substance of Good.
25.
A Phantom Worker
These are sublime digressions, but Science has nothing to do with such considerations, you will
say.
The question is whether they are true or false. If they are true, and Economic Science elaborates
its theories and calculations on the premise that they are false, than all its conclusions are invalidated.
This is what happened to Marx with his scientific precision instrument for measuring value, I mean
his Average Worker. No doubt he felt that this gave him a solid foundation, safe from metaphysical
controversy, a real, concrete starting point but this average-of-all-the-workers-of-all-trades-of-alltimes-and-of-all-countries is an inconsistent generality if ever there was one, and the number of hours
this creature of reason spends on undertermined work leaves us in the vague and in the void concerning
the value of his product.
26.
The Six Factors of Production
Human work is not, as he claims, the Only value that produces others, or, to translate the formula
into correct terms: the only wealth that produces wealth. I can think of five others: Land, Livestock,
Equipment, Money and Intelligence.
To begin with, Land which has value in itself and not by virtue of work, since it is the inevitable,
irreplacable and universal condition of such work and the rawest of raw materials. It can bring forth
fruit by itself and be all the more valuable as it is virgin.
It is true that to take the earths riches, one must work, even if only to pick them. It is true that one
must nearly always cultivate and that, at the limit, cultivation can transform the desert into a garden and
the mountain into a golden mine, which proves that land alone does not suffice. However, that is not
what I mean, since altogether there are six factors of production which benefit from one another in a
great many ways. Marx alone claims that one of these factors is enough, namely, work. He forgets that
human work is not a divine creation and that it can draw nothing from nothing, but is always applied to
something given. He forgets the Creator, and all the faults in his reasoning spring from that oversight.
81
In addition to agriculture, the riches the earth yields comprise forests and springs, wild plants and
fruits, quarries and mines, rivers and shores, caves and shelter as well as fish and game.
Which brings us to Livestock or domesticated game, which breeds naturally and not because of
mans sweat and toil, and which needs only to be kept and taken care of, work which bears no comparison with the gain it brings.
Human work is always applied to something by means of something which is the Tool. Now it is
not true either that the tool is merchandise which is what it is and it is worth what is worth wherever it
is used and however it is handled. It is a riches which produces others, in close relation with the work,
of course, and in two ways: as a product of work and as a means of work. Its purpose is to reduce effort
and multiply the product.
When the tool takes the form of a machine, it even manages to do the work and supplant the man.
Money is not so much a riches as a sign of riches and an instrument of exchange. It detaches, so to
speak, its value from merchandise just as turbines, accumulators and wiring detach from a waterfall its
power, which they transmit and distribute. Thus money is a motor that makes the wheels of business go
round and is not only the result of that business but also the form in which its results are registered and
counted, but also one of the means, one of the causes, and sometimes the sole cause of profit.
In the form of capital, that is to say, an accumulation of resources in the same hands, the productive
power of money springs from its force of attraction and coordination for the establishment of a collective
enterprise. The wealth which results could not be produced by human work9 without money. Capital
produces to the advantage of those who possess it, and in varying degree, of those who serve it.
Lastly, there is a sixth source of riches: Intelligence.
Here we are of course considering it not as a spiritual value, but as a factor of production. It
comprises technical capacity, inventive power, initiative, a gift for scheming and a sense of opportunity.
The lack of this sixth factor makes the others ineffective.
Which proves that the whole of economy is an affair of knowledge. Indeed, it is the very fruit of
The Knowledge.
27.
Ten Personages in Quest of Unity
The outstanding feature and the pride of our civilization in its progress is to have set up huge economic machines in which each of the six factors of production becomes complicated and cumbersome
to the extent of forming a separate entity. As such, each of these factors is in the hands of different men,
men belonging to groups and classes foreign and rival to one another but perpetually abraded by the
friction of close interdependence.
Thus the employer and the worker, the employee and the farmer, the technician and the labourer, the
financier and the intellectual, the engineer and the tradesman, who each have a link in the chain, differ
in their morals and manners, their education, their aspirations, and their aims; and live in ignorance,
fear and suspicion of one another.
The interdependence of the six factors explains the fact that each of the groups, seeing that nothing
could be done without it, draws the ambitious and mistaken conclusion that it does everything all by
itself and that the advantage of the whole is due to it alone.
9
I use this term in the Marxian sense, i.e. the work of an average worker paid by the hour. This is not at all my conception
of truly human work, as will be seen later.
82
Whence general discontent, class struggle and the dream of so many men, that they will see the
regime by which they live collapse.
Live? No, they feel, beyond all doubt, that they are not living. They function.
Life, for them, begins when the day is done; it begins with leave, it begins with retirement! Life,
the great life, is what others live!
Life will begin (the ambitious think) when I have reached a post where the machine will run to my
profit.
No! when it runs to the profit of our party and our class! says the politician.
No! says the reformer. When the different parts of the machine are better adjusted.
Karl Marxs generous ambition was to re-adjust the machine so that it would work for the greatest
good of the greatest number. . .
Few are wise or clearsighted enough to see that the shortcomings of the machine are much less
dangerous than its perfection.
Because mechanical things are the opposite of living things, and the most impeccable social machine is the one in which man and his life will most assuredly be ground, laminated and reduced to
nothing.
The way back to life lies in simplifying and reducing external apparatus. Neither peace nor justice
is possible so long as the six elements of production are not united in the same hands; then only will
there be unity of life in work.
If they cannot all be in the same hands, let them be shared by people who know and love one
another and agree.
Every economic order in which the unity of life is broken and replaced by any arrangement whatever, and in which profitseeking and prudence have priority over friendship, will always bring unhappiness to those it imprisons and will end by breaking up through excessive friction.
28.
The Alienation of the Worker

The alienation of the worker is one of Marxs most interesting themes of reflection.
Etymologically, the word alienation means the passing of property into foreign hands. As a
philosophical term, it was borrowed by Marx from Hegel, who used it to describe the change into its
opposite of one of the two poles of the real; the first, by projecting and objectifying the second, becomes
exterior and lost to itself, until it resumes its integrity, enriched in a third state in which the contrast is
resolved.
Marx, whom one might call an alienation of Hegel, that is to say, his opposite issuing from
him, transposes this metaphysical scheme on to the plane of the social and psychological situation of
mankind torn and lost by its own doing.
He shows how the worker is dispossessed of the product and profit of his work, dispossessed of his
work itself which, chopped up by the machine and the division of labour, becomes an alien activity,
activity that is suffering, force that is impotence, procreation that is castration10 ; dispossessed of nature
by his hellish environment in the factory; dispossessed of his own nature and reduced to being human
10
Manuscripts, 1844.
83
in his animal functions only, reinforcing, with all his might and in spite of himself, the power that
oppresses and exploits him. . .
Marx points out that the Bourgeois is alienated the other way round: his alienation is no less evil
for being less painful.
It is tempting to pursue his analysis further and to show how each of our Ten Personages in Quest
of an author (the Employer and the Worker, the Employee and the Farmer, the Technician and the
Labourer, the Financier and the Intellectual, the Engineer and the Tradesman) to show how each
undergoes nine kinds of alienation on the plane of economy alone, not to mention the religious and
philosophical alienation on which Marx insists, presenting as the first alienation Religion itself.
But it is Religious Error that is alienation, like Marxs materialism, for example, or Hegels Idealism, which is scarcely better. It is Idolatry that is alienation, revolutionary idolatry, for example, or
the reactionary kind; and deviations of truth are not, as Marx claims, effects and reflections of social
disorder, misery and opposition, but are among their very causes.
Let us not forget that Everything begins in thought: when thought is wrong, affliction follows as
the wheels of the cart follow the step of the ox.11 Let us not put the relationship between thought and
the rest the wrong way round by putting the cart before the oxen instead of changing direction.
Let us not forget that Alienation or possession of oneself by another power means Madness.
In our ten personages we have half a score of demons and winds of folly to rock the world and
make it spin like a whirlwind. So long as man is possessed and his strings are pulled and jerked by
others, as long as he is not master of his work, of his means of work and of the fruit of his work, above
all, as long as his is not master of his soul and lord of his life, general madness will last, and bloody
revolutions will be only its convulsive fits.
Lastly, let us not forget that Alienation means Sale, and that the economic alienation of the worker
is the sale of that worker, or salary.
The evil is not that he does not sell well, nor is the cure better salaries. Wage-earning is the
degradation of man who has sold himself. Therefore it is not Capital that must be abolished, but wageearning.
The Dictature of the Proletariat is not the Liberation of the Proletariat, all dictature being the
negation of all liberty. The Liberation of the Proletariat is the Abolishment of the Proletariat.
29.
The Honesty of Liberal and Bourgeois Economy
When the worker accuses the employer of imposing an unfair wage on him, and Marx upholds him
in this opinion, both are ingenuously attributing to the employer sinister intentions he does not have,
and a power he lacks.
The workers wage, and the price of goods, are what they are: given factors in which the employer
has no say, but which he must accept as the basis of his calculations in order to find scope for his
business somewhere between the two.
He cannot lower his workers wages without risking their leaving him for employment elsewhere.
Nor, being under pressure from competition, can he raise them without running the risk of bankruptcy.
The wage is determined by offer and demand alone, with the impeccable amorality of water finding
11
Buddha, Dhammapada
84
its own level.
Even for a planned economy, (in other words, economy deliberately falsified by the government)
even, indeed, for an economy corrected by pressure from the trade unions, there is danger in any
departure from these natural laws.
The lowness of wages is not due to the avarice or hardheartedness of the directors, but to involuntary competition between the workers themselves, due to their numbers and their incapacity for
independence.
It is not true that plus value, or, to speak English, business profit is gained by keeping wages
down or by fraudulously extorting overtime, and the proof of it is that wages are at their highest, and
hours of work at their shortest (eight hours a day) precisely where industry is most properous.
Profit, in industries equipped and directed by capital, comes from the concentration of means, the
division of labour, shrewd organisation, their intense and continuous functioning, the strength of their
roots and the extent of their ramifications, the use of machines, the application of the exact sciences
to manufacturing and extracting processes, and of the social sciences and political influence to staff
management and the disposal of merchandise.
And the value of any or all of these operations has nothing to do with any number of hours of an
average workers work.
30.
The Reason for Commerce
Marxs views on the principles of trade and on causes of profit reveal the same ignorance concerning the nature of things.
When he asserts that the tradesman has no other function or profession than to sell goods for more
than they are worth, he accredits the latter with conjuring skill or magical power he lacks. If it were
thanks to trickery that the tradesman lived at public expense, one might well wonder how, during the
forty centuries or more that trade has been going on, nobody, with the exception of Marx, has seen
through the tricks.
It is untrue to say that the tradesman has made no change in the object which he sells for more than
he paid.
He has made it change place.
But thats just a detail! Its quite incidental!
Yes, great thinker, political economist, perfect realist, it is just a detail.
And space and time are just two details. (But had he not forgotten about another a few minutes
back: the Creator?)
By making the object change place at a chosen time, the merchant has endowed it with a new
quality, without which its other qualities would be nothing. That quality is: its opportunity.
The object having changed place, everything is changed. If the tradesman, like our philosopher,
were not aware of this truth, he would go bankrupt. (Philosophers have the advantage of going bankrupt
without noticing.)
By bringing the merchandise with the utmost rapidity into the spot where it is in the greatest
demand, the tradesman is the most powerful stimulus of the circulation of goods, and the most sensitive
regulator of prices.
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His advantage whatever one may think is generally to sell at the lowest price.
Merchandise and money are dead riches if they stagnate. Getting them to their destination with all
possible speed is to make them live and be.
It is just as mistaken to see commerce as a morbid fattening, a parasitical excrescence, as it would
be to say of the heart, because it does not secrete the blood it pumps in and out, that it is a leech, or a
swelling.12
Trade is not carried on without malpractice, it is true. But nothing can be defined by its defects.
The market can be rigged by advertising, cornering and fraud. But Competition is the supervision and
control one merchant exercises over another, more effective than the utmost rigour of the law, and to
the greatest advantage of the customer, that is to say, of all.
That from one hour to the next, the price of an object may increase tenfold or drop to nothing
without there being any increase or loss in the quality of the object itself, is an incontestable fact for
which the economist must account. But if he thinks that value is produced by the hand of the jobber
and incorporated in the object as the yolk of an egg is added to the sugar and flour of a cake, then the
rise and fall of prices can only seem to him a miracle or a scandal.
Value is not a product.
Value is not an object.
Value is not in objects.
It is in the heart of man, in his desires and his judgement.
It is in relations between man and man.
Commercial value is a measure of the intensity of desire, or rather, of the tension between two or
several men whose desires converge on an object to their mutual exclusion.
But nothing is as variable as desire, which may change into indifference or even disgust.
And the most ordinary cause for the extinction of desire is its satisfaction.
If desire is easily satisfied, then the object by which satisfaction is procured becomes worthless,
even if it answers the strongest and most elementary need. Such, for instance, is the case of air, water,
and light.
The object must therefore be rare and difficult to obtain, but possessable.
Every spiritual good is rare and difficult to obtain. That is why it has a value, or rather, why it
is a value. But it is impossible to own, in the sense that the more commonly it is enjoyed, the more
enjoyable it is, and those who desire it desire others to desire and obtain it. Such is shared good; for
example, music and truth.
They are of no commercial value. They are without price.
Without price also are the goods that cannot be shared or exchanged, such as love, or a husband
or a wife, or inner freedom, or the fame an authors work brings him, or the authority that comes from
virtue coupled with learning.
Only goods that can be shared or exchanged are of commercial value, that is to say, goods of an
inferior, a limited and material order. Their sole value is that attributed to them.
This attributed value increases as their number decreases and is in direct proportion to the number
12
We are not claiming that all trades are blameless or that none are parasitical; we have even shown the contrary. But our
condemnation of commerce as a game was of a religious and spiritual order; our present defence is of an economic order.
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of those who want them and the resistance of their owners.
Now, whereas to possess means to defend, to gain means to conquer.
In every convergence of covertousness upon an object, conflict is latent. If conflict broke out every
time, there would be no society possible.
When conflict breaks out between members of the same society, there are plunder and crime. If it
breaks out between two sovereign societies, there is war.
But the constant, tacit conquest that goes on without bloodshed, if not without struggle, is called
Gain.
Instead of striking or provoking the party one wants to dispossess, one summons him to a conference and offers him a treaty.
He is paid, and pacare, to pay, means to appease.
Which brings us back to what has already been demonstrated: that Trade is halfway between Play
and War.
That if trade is a trade, that trade is of the nature of play and war rather than of work. Of the nature
of a game of chance. And profit is not bought at the price of toil, as in work, but at the price of genuine
risk.
The risk of losing is compensated by the luck of winning.
Such is the honour of the warrior and the honesty of the trader.
31.
Scientific Economy or Moral Mystification
One may call in question the justice of this compensation by risk and chance. We too call it in
question.
One may deplore the lack of charity implicit in the refusal to give up a good without compensation,
even when one has no need of it. We too deplore it.
One may find it more commendable to work with ones hands to satisfy ones needs, than to traffic
in order to find the pecuniary means of doing so without toil (that is to say, by means of someone elses
toil). We, too, believe this.
One may believe that work alone is moral, whereas play and conflict are not, or are no more so
than theft. We also believe this and affirm it with all our might.
But we should be quite clear about what we are discussing.
Are we speaking of morals, O Marx, or of economy?
One can speak of one or the other. One may even try to determine the laws of an economy in
harmony with morality, the highest morality, and we shall try.
But what we must avoid is speaking of morality in economic terms, and playing on words.
Now Marx, under colour of economic science, expounds disguised morality.
And the result of this questionable mixture is on the one hand, a superficial morality, a morality of
revolt, not of justice, and on the other, of an economic science entirely contrived.
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32.
Value and Price

On the subject of economy, one cannot talk of the value of a merchandise apart from its price.
For economic science, like the other sciences, considers experimental fact alone. Now the only
expression of the value of a thing that can be called an economic fact is: the price.
The price is the effective and objective determination of the value by the proof of exchange: its
realisation, verifiable on a given market.
Value is not to be confused with price any more than it is to be confused with cost less still with
the cost of labour alone, to which Marx reduces it in fact.
The value of merchandise is the price it would have if on a universal market all objects of the
same nature were offered at the same time to every possible buyer without artifice or pressure of any
kind, a condition which is never realised and can only be imagined. And imagination is the stuff of the
personal interpretation that a judgement of value is. It is a mental view. Which does not mean than
it is nothing. Actually it is always in the mind of the seller, as of the buyer, for each of whom it is the
basis of the impression that he has made a good or a bad deal. And it is on this abstract basis that one
can discuss the just price.
Since the Just Price, or ideal and virtual value belongs neither to the order of Principles nor to
that of Truths, but to the Plane of the Artificial, and depends on the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Bad (of
which each of us has good or bad knowledge) it curves and swerves across the complexity of imaginary
relations like the graph of averages and is expressed in current prices, which are provisional, everoscillating conventions.
Moreover, it is only a support on which each hangs the scales weighted by his personal tastes,
beliefs, memories, illusions, vanity and whims, and his secret that the world will never know.
So that the most advantageous price for the seller may well satisfy the buyer. And if both seller and
buyer are satisfied, in the name of what categorical imperative or what law of nature are we to decree
that the one has cheated the other and that the other was wrong to let himself be done the wrong with
which he is so pleased?
33.
Three Kinds of Assembly
It is true that the merchant adds nothing to what is, but neither does the worker, since no-one creates
except the Creator.
All the worker does is to separate pieces or elements from their natural entity and assemble them
in a new composition: the product.
The manufacturer creates nothing: he assembles men of different and complementary talents, workers, engineers, inventors, managers, supervisors, representatives, disposes them in buildings, attaches
them to machines or offices, distributes the raw material to them, rids them of the product and provides
the merchant with the merchandise.
The merchant makes the last and decisive connection in the definitive assembly, thus closing the
long circuit that began before any work was undertaken; in riches dormant under the earth, scattered
overseas, lost at the poles, in the desert or in the virgin forest, a circuit begun by the discovery and
reckoning of resources, terminated after thousand of detours, delays, and dangers by the assembly of
the object and the buyer.
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34.
The Epic of Trade

What poets you would be, O Traders, if you traded with the Muses!
What a heroic poem your adventures would make if you knew how to recount and sing of them!
Your courage and boldness are the courage and boldness of heroes and you would share their glory
if, like them, you were capable of doing something for nothing.
What sovereigns you would be, O leaders of men, what pomp and glory would be yours, princes
reigning over princes and peoples, if you did not shut away your treasures in boxes and cellars!
Before the poets, before the thinkers, before the architects, it was you, merchants, who founded
Athens, Venice and Florence.
It was you who opened the gates of the Orient, you who conquered the fabulous Empire of India,
more swiftly and thoroughly than Tamberlane, and much more destructively, O humble ravagers, O
meek and mild plunderers!
You arm the armies. They obey others, but it is you they unknowingly serve.
Everything profits you, even war and ruin.
Workers can make, transform, and equip anything and everything, but you can do better still:
you can buy their work.
Scientists know so much that they can penetrate anything and everything, turn it inside out and
disintegrate it but you know better still: you know how to buy their discoveries.
You know things and people.
You know this and that, and their equivalence, and you exchange them. You know Good-and-Evil
and their equivalence and their exchange.
You know how to eat the fruit; its husk of goodness, beautiful and hard, its pulp of mischief, so
sweet to taste, its seed of kindness with the tiny shoot of evil sprouting from its tip.
35.
The Mystical Character of Commerce

The enigma of Mercury, god of the merchants.
The mystery of Hermes, Master of great and small mysteries and patron of thieves.
God of Relations, god who is not God, indifferent to the Absolute, a stranger to the truth.
Double god, double-faced, double-sensed, double-based, God of Relations.
God of merchants, god of exchange, of communications, of relations.
God of relations, of changes, relative and changing god, perpetually changing, universally relative,
relation and term, but terminus bifrons13 , a door, but a door opening both ways.
God of relations, god of roads and crossroads, milestone urging the traveller on, laughing, watchful
stone raised at the limit, at the fork of choice.
Port across the sea, port open on the deep, star and heavenly guide in the peril of the sea, god who
makes of the barrier of the waves a link between people, and of the fearsome, moving abyss, a shortcut
13
double-browed landmark.
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to fortune.
God of relations, link between heaven and earth and messenger of the gods, guardian of the invisible
highways of the wind, with winged helmet and heel, wings before his brow and behind his feet.
God of relations, inspirer of Invention and Adventure, transformer of the discoveries of science and
the wonders of fable into Good Bargains.
Bearer, in his right hand, of the straight sceptre of measure, around which two serpents counterpoise
their coils, the serpent of prudence and the serpent of guile, the serpent of poison and of healing, the
serpent of treachery and of relationship, enlaced.
God of intelligence, prudent protector of those who take risks, those who calculate boldly and are
generous by calculation.
Giver, not of gifts, but of chances, gracious to the clever at taking, favourable to the clever at
twisting, indulgent to the clever at adapting truth, and turning it to their advantage, the clever at wielding
the weapon of obligingness, and practising the arts of connivance and compromise, god eversmiling,
but as merciless toward the foolish and clumsy, as toward the brutal and bloodthirsty.
God of strained relations, gentle snares, unbroken laces; victorious god whose sleight of war is not
only to avoid war while keeping the victory and the spoil, but also to win the consent of an adversary
despoiled, subjugated, and turned into an accomplice.
Magic of intelligence, intelligence of the occult relations of substance with the relations, introduction to the powers of the abyss.
Planet in heaven, metal in the mine and subterranean light.
Mercury or quicksilver, cold and liquid metal, silver that eats gold, universal solvent, agent that
dissolves being and makes it flow from one form into another and undulate like life. Magic of transmutations drawing from all things living gold.
Mephistopheles Trismegistos14 or thrice mighty serpent, double-tongued serpent with a body of
gold and silver, double-sexed lover of himself, bearer of a double, shimmering light, supreme Knower
of Good-and-Evil.
36.
From Infinite and Substantial Value to Monetary Fiction
We defined Value as the power-of-Good, the Quantity-of-Quality and the Reserve-of-Good-latentin-substance.

We then spoke of value as being the Measure of the intensity of desire, the measure of the tension
between the desires of several.
It remains to show how this definition is related to the former, without which it would deserve the
criticism that applies to Marxs definition.
Absolute Value, the only Concrete Universal (to use Hegels term) is Good-in-Itself, not of outward appearance, in its depths ever beyond our reach and never obvious, it eternally presents itself as an
object of faith, and Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Heb.
XI, 1).
The supreme values, like Truth, Beauty and Justice, are its attributes.
14
Tris, tree times; Megistos, the greatest. The ritual title of Hermes, master of the mysteries of Egypt. Mephistopheles or
rather Megistopheles: Megistos, the greatest; Ophis, serpent.
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They are defined in language by Theology and Philosophy; revealed by Religion and natural Reason; confirmed by so-called Universal Content but the universality of their formulation is by right
rather than by fact for their perfect comprehension belongs to a chosen few if not to God alone. The
supreme values, ultimate truth, elude objective measurement and exact observation, not that they
are subjective or vague, but because they are profound and immense.
The value of persons depends on the resources of their character. These are partly manifested in
their behaviour and their works, whence the credit given them, and Credit is the same word as belief.
Their value is socially estimated and expressed in their rank, their reputation and their authority:
by human judgement in degrees always open to question and generally false. But a mans value is the
relation of his inner life, his conscience, his center, to Good-in-Itself. A mans value is Gods secret.
***
As for an object considered as merchandise, it has no inner life (or at least it is impenetrable and
indifferent in this respect). It is all outward and consequently valueless.
But it is connected with the inner man in that it is an object of desire.
The desire in the man gives the object an inwardness and a value of desire-objectivity.
The value of the object is a projection and a reflection.
Here again, value is connected with belief, for an object of value is one believed to be a bringer of
future or possible good, and if, some day, its possession is a disappointment, that is because the value
attributed to it was only a deformed reflection.
And this is how, whereas true values cannot be translated into a language that defines, contains,
fathoms and expresses them, only false values, that is to say, projected values, those of limited material
objects are reductible to precise numerical measurement, because they can be classed by Quantity,
which is a relation of outside to outside.
This relation becomes clear and established in exchange. A deceptively objective relation, for it
does not result from the comparison of an object with another object, but from the tension between one
desire and another.
It goes without saying that payment is not homage rendered to the quality of an object but a concession made to the owner so that he will give it up and consider himself satisfied.
The relation of value is expressed in a particular language which is neither that of Quality (words)
nor that of Quantity (figures). The language of value combines both since the language of Value is the
synthesis of Quality and Quantity. It is not merely a language; at the same time it is an instrument of
measure. Now, just as a solid object is needed to measure solids, a weighty object to measure weight,
so an object of value is needed to measure and express the value of objects.
This concrete language is called money.
37.
The Poetics of Money
Money is a false object, tangible but unreal, a possession from which one can get nothing. So long
as you have it in your cashbox or your pocket or your hand, it is as nothing.
If you want to benefit from it, you must spend it, and then you no longer have it.
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The gold or silver of which money is made no longer belongs to the material world of useful things.
It might have been used to make ceremonial dishes, jewels, divine ornaments, or false teeth, but minted,
it is no longer merchandise, for nobody will spend ten dollars to buy ten dollars.
Besides, gold and silver have never had any other real utility than being beautiful. They lend
themselves to decorative and symbolic use only. This is what destined them to become the matter of
money, just as sound is the matter of speech.
Gold is the sum, blood, and substance of things, for things are light hardened and incrusted.
Silver is the moon, water, sap, and the milk of nature.
This is not a question of appearances and literary comparison, but, if philosophers and alchemists
are to be believed, of analogy inherent in the substance of things and proved by the transmutation of
black matter into living gold. Chinese doctors restore vigour and peace to a sick body by means of two
needles, one of gold, the other of silver. The solar needle stimulates, the silver one calms.
Moreover, gold is rare and concentrates great value in little space. All the toil of mining, riddling
of riverbeds, exploration, conquest, discovery, and transmutation, these mainsprings of research and the
history of nations, have not succeeded (fortunately) in making it lose its value; and as often as its bulk
increases in the world, increasing trade in the same degree, its value remains remarkably steady.
It is unalterable and can be buried in the earth or even in water without being attacked by rust or
worms.
Gold is always the same wherever it comes from and the difference between one gold and another
are due to alloy and nothing else.
It is divisible, and the price of each part is proportionate to its weight, which is not the case with
diamonds and other stones.
All these qualities are conveniences which justify its use, but they are also meanings which contribute to its cosmic significance.
Thus the square-headed business man, the fish-eyed financier, and the trafficker who boast that
they believe only in what they can touch, unwittingly pay tribute to primitive religions, beliefs, magic,
mythical and mystical traditions, and the miser15 blindly sacrifices to an unknown god.
Just as the eye is the eye and light of the body by its pupil, so gold and silver become money only
if they bear the stamp, the effigy, the name, number, and roundness of the astral disk.
This sovereign signature consecrates the money and elevates it from the world of things to the
world of signs.
It is a thing that signifies other things, but, above all, signifies rights and powers in the order of
human relations. Metal has become specie, a word that means appearance, beauty, and reflection.
That men attach themselves to these conventional symbols of possible advantage more strongly
than to objects and the pleasure of the senses or the moment, more strongly than to loving, resting,
or going for a walk, reveals in the most stupid a high degree of abstract imagination unwitting,
senseless, perverted, and stunted though it be. This is one of the instances in which one can lay ones
finger on the nature of the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil and its difference from knowledge.
If money is a language, unlike speech, it does not aim at agreement and does not establish communication between men but achieves the separation of payer and payee.
If it is a numerical system, its precision, unlike that of science, is incapable of any truth. Being at
15
Miserliness, which is also idolatry, says St. Paul.
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the same time a thing and the sign of another thing, its peculiar mode of representation is replacement.
It represents the absence of what it represents.
If money is the expression of a right, it is a right of fact and chance, a right without justice.
Money is the official pass to every abuse.
It is a way of grabbing things by means of men and finally of grabbing men by means of things.
It is the language of trickery, as speech is that of intelligence.
If we do not want to falsify or rather, if we want not to falsify all our relations with our
neighbour, the best use we can make of money is to do without it as much as possible.
38.
The Business World
Nevertheless, the business world is not just a haunt of robbers or a jungle where snakes and wild
beasts seek their pray. Decency prevails there and even pleasantness.
The friendly smiles, the hearty handshakes, the marks of respect and solicitude are not necessarily
devoid of all sincerity.
When everything has been verified, earnest money paid and signatures exchanged, business deals
may be consecrated by choice dinners, toasts to friendship and flowery speeches.
The fact that the business man is careful not to fleece or cheat his colleague does not prove that
his sole reason for doing so is fear of a lawsuit or legal punishment, nor is it completely ridiculous to
suppose that moral scruples play some part in his behaviour. Or at least that he has been wise enough
to recognise that in the long run, honesty is more to his advantage than its opposite.
This eminently human and civilised world is the very one for which Jesus did not pray. (John,
17,9). At first view, one wonders why.
It is the very world of which he says, Me it hateth, because I testify of it that its works are evil.
(John, 7,7)
Evil! How? And for whom?
It is the very world of which St. James says in his epistle, The friendship of the world is enmity
with God. (4,4)
How? Mundus, the world, means order. How can someone who likes order, counts, weighs and
arranges, be an enemy of God?
The mistake is to think that there is only one kind of order, or that any order is good, or that disorder
is the only opposite of order.
Disorder cannot resist order any more that darkness can resist light, or weakness resist power. But
evil resists. Therefore it is another order and sets itself up against order. It is a power of darkness, a
false clarity that blurs the light. And the fact is that men of the world, and the Prince of this world,
outshine others in knowledge, prestige and virtues.
The business world, and not the vain and depraved world of society, is that which best deserves
the biblical name of world, for of all worlds it is the most serious, the most hardworking, the most civil
in short, the most orderly.
Moreover, all the worlds, the worlds of drawing rooms, courts, embassies, workshops, cafes, conferences and meetings all these worlds are business worlds.
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And the business of the world is this: to make use of the intelligence. And what is the use of
intelligence, if not to make use of others?
The business of this world is to consider others as means toward ones own ends, or else not to
consider them at all, in order to save time, for, as we all know, time is money.
There is nothing in a human being that a clever person cannot turn to use: the kind feelings or
evil desires of his friends, their fortune, their acquaintances, their fame; the beauty of his own wife, the
weakness of someone elses; this mans talent, that mans vanity, the ignorance and wretchedness of the
great number; all serve his business if he is intelligent and versed in Good-and-Evil.
A fathers sudden death is a business event, the marriage of the beautiful girl to the old man at
deaths door is a business deal. The rocket to the moon and the bomb to blow up the earth are also
business.
The business is to keep others as busy as possible, to give the least and obtain the most.
The business world would soon become absurd if it were not taken for granted that each in his
own field does the same. Lend yourself, if need be, to the other mans manoeuvres with seeming
unawareness, provided he complies with your own. To the grocer, the customer is a step towards
fortune: to the customer, he is a hand holding out a box of sugar or a cake of soap. Thanking you, Sir.
Much obliged! To the owner, the employee is one of the elements of his firm, one of the unfortunately
indispensable factors of his profit. To the employee, the head of the business is a watchful pair of
eye-glasses, and his pay.
The prostitute gets what she wants from the passerby, and he from her. They quit each other, quit
and satisfied.
Why does this respectable man send his son to school? He will tell you readily: so that later on,
the boy shall have a good post. And in what lies the goodness of a post? In great gain and little labour,
other peoples labour churning out our profit as falling water turns the millwheel.
While the controls of the law and the blessings of morality cover it all.
Law and morality consist in forcing nothing, breaking nothing, so that business can go on without
the pivots groaning or the framework collapsing. Thus things fall into place, and a kind of justice comes
about perforce.
This brings about a material order of human affairs governed by the laws of conservation and
inertia, impenetrability and heaviness, an order opposed in every point to the order of charity.
Thus, side by side with disorder, want, vice and crime, the world has an impeccable order which is
the excellence of sin and The Sin par excellence.
Economy is one of its most perfect expressions.
The serpent is an animal without hair or feathers. He is all gold and silver.
39.
The Advantage of Mutual Profit over Simple Robbery
Morality is not our concern in this chapter, which deals with economy. It is therefore for reasons
of economic propriety that I advise you not to be a robber.
No serious economy is founded on robbery. Quick oneway profits never last. And economy
even the least political and the most private remains perpetually exposed to risk and disorder.
But if you are sly, cunning, attentive and daring, as a good robber should be, it is in your interest
94
to choose the game of Mutual Profit.
The game consists in grabbing all one can while accepting that everybody else grabs too.
The game of Mutual Profit is not an optional pastime or amusement. It is an important branch of
the Science-of-Good-and-Evil and is the basic law of the civil world, just as the law of gravitation and
of gravity is that of the physical.
It is the game of attraction and repulsion which enables everything to find its place in a regular
circulation and a stable order.
The chass-crois of opposed interests forms a close weave, ripped now and then by crooks. Other
holes are burnt in it by charitable acts and divine inspiration. Which explains the importunity of saints
at all times, for they spoil the game just as much as do the cheats, although with less discretion. In
short, they are intolerable and have to be harassed out of circulation and crucified, if possible, between
two thieves.
As for you, be neither a crook nor a saint, but play the game, for besides the gain that luck, corrected
by talent, will bring you, morality will bless you and cover you with its cloak. Even in this, do not think
that I am preaching: I am prepared to prove the accountable value of that cloak.
The winner of this game is the man who is sufficiently intelligent to consider the other mans profit,
not as an inevitable drawback, but as bait for a more lasting advantage. Even in his most profitable deals,
he will always see to it that the other man goes off pleased and ready to come back with his merchandise
or his custom.
If you think that pleasing your victim is a problem of the same nature as squaring the circle, you
just do not understand the Science-of-Good-and-Evil. The whole secret of Commerce (and everything
is Commerce) lies in the Conversion of Inequalities and in the Calculation of the Equality of Incommensurables, operations based on the principles that things have only the value attributed to them.
All you have to do now is to find the man who is crazy about the thing that matters least to you,
then with the utmost kindness and at the highest possible price, concede it to him. He will be grateful.
The Conversion of Inequalities is to obtain a good for a good that is lesser, but shinier,
newer and which comes just at the right moment, or to offer an imaginary good for a real
one, for example, hair-restorer or the title of Count in exchange for cash.
The Calculation of the Equality of Incommensurables: A sells a surrealist painting and buys
a house of real stone; B sells his fortune for a girls beauty; C buys a handsome dowry for
the price of a sulky wife; X puts his opinions in his pocket and takes over power; Y barters
his sweat and blood for a word of praise; and for a donation to the municipal nursery, Z
gets himself the honour of a commemorative plate which will be all his very own after his
death.
In conclusion, grab eagerly, but let go immediately and even push instead of hanging on: keep
pushing and pulling the string of give-and-take, otherwise you will break things.
And believe me, honesty is the best policy. (The expression, I am sorry to say, is not mine. Presumably it originated in America.)
The most politic of economies and the most economic of morals.
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40.
Friendly Advice
In consequence, I do not advise you to be a robber (forgive my insistance). Success is too rare and
the price in risk too high.
On the other hand, what I do recommend you warmly is to be the son of a successful robber, and
his heir.
For his worries, his turpitude, his remorse all have gone with the old man. Its none of your
business. Your business is tranquil possession of the inheritance.
What do you think of that? As a bit of jugglery, does it not surpass the old swindlers cleverest
tricks? Conjuring away the sin without diminishing the fruit!
41.
The Law watches

The law watches over us, but she is shortsighted and almost completely devoid of imagination.
She watches the fingers of the taker at the moment of exchange and sometimes cavils at his sleight
of hand.
But no sooner is the thing as good as done than her acquiescence and her consecration are the
rightful due of all property without distinction.
If, for example, your annual gains amount to one and a half billion, it will never come into her head
to wonder what sort of service you can possibly render society for such remarkable remuneration.
But should she catch you in the act of starving on a public thoroughfare, she will declare you
suspect, and even guilty, for vagrancy is an offence in terms of the law. (Prostitution is not, no more
than is stockjobbing.) She whose duty it is to protect the goods of the citizen, is at a loss to know how
to deal with you. She cannot very well allow you the right to have nothing to do with her!
You are not playing the game. Yet you have bought that right dearly!
Do not think, gentlemen, that the Law is a spoilsport. On the contrary, she has her eyes on the
roundabout and keeps things moving. She is the pivot on which the wheel of fortune turns.
42.
The Three States of Economic Matter
When Economic matter money or merchandise is in its liquid state, it cannot be allowed to
congeal or stagnate, for should it cease to flow, or flow more slowly, the resulting damage would be
almost as bad as scarcity.
This applies to currency, mass-produced articles, and, above all, perishable foods.
But landed property is wealth in its solid state: land, building sites, buildings, and establishments.
The ruin of an estate is called its liquidation.
Money in its solid state is known as capital. Whereas currency is never worth more than it costs,
money amassed takes on new value by virtue of its mass, which is all the rarer the bigger it is. Although
water and ice are of the same substance, they cannot be used for the same purpose. This is also the case
with money, which, in its liquid state, can only be spent; but condensed into capital, enables property to
be acquired, businesses to be set up and managed, and in consequence entitles one to the fruits. While
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the sleeping partner receives more than a labourer (although it is harder work to wield a spade than to
hand over even a big sum of money), and more than an engineer (although the possession of millions
of dollars is not such proof of intelligence as the possession of a diploma), this is not because he has
forced everyone to pay him tribute, but because his assistance (no less indispensable than that of the
others) was probably more difficult to obtain. If there were not so many workers, and if capital were
not so scarce, wages would obviously be higher and unearned income lower.
Marx predicted (prediction today being no longer the prophets business but the intellectuals) that
Capital would destroy itself and that the Revolution need only give it the coup de grace. He argued that
since Capital is the means by which the rich draw their wealth from the poor, a means which keeps on
enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor, it would end up by sapping its own base and toppling
over.
Nevertheless it is just the contrary that has taken place in countries where the capitalist regime, not
having been destroyed by force, has been able to develop naturally.
The rise of the poor there has been continuous16 , whereas persons with private incomes and property are more and more anxious about their lot. Many of them seek employment and salaries. Moreover,
they adopt the slang and the manners of the people, whereas the people educate, dress, house and amuse
themselves after the fashion of the bourgeois.
The conquest of bourgeois comfort and respectability by the proletariat, and, somewhat later, by
the peasantry, is a general phenomenon and does not affect externals only.
In capitalist countries, the total value of small properties notably exceeds that of big fortunes,
whereas the great number of shareholding companies have acquainted the small saver with the profits
of Big Capital, so true is it that the difference between liquid and solid is not a question of quantity, a
thousand franc note being Change whereas a thousand franc share is Capital.
In certain factories, especially in America, the workers are given shares as a bonus or in partpayment. In this way they partake in increment value and are linked to the fate of Capital.
Besides, Capital cannot be done away with if the production and circulation of goods are not to be
reduced.
Certainly, capital is not necessary since the people of the Lower Congo do very well without it.
Whoever burns an area of scrub and sows cassava owns the field until it has been harvested. Theft,
slavery and dire poverty are unknown there. But are the Communists capable of this?
Whatever the case may be, they have not yet done so. What they have done is to take Power with
their right hand and Capital with the left, after which the mass of non-communists has had no choice
but to work for them.
In Soviet countries, capital belongs to no-one but the State. But to whom does the State belong?
In capitalist countries, the state supports, rescues and finally takes over all the biggest firms. They
call this nationalisation and it does not change the life of the country in the slightest.
On every side, the people is becoming more and more bourgeois. On every side, exactly the
same sort of institutions are being elaborated, and the more they resemble one another, the more they
oppose one another. Here it is, the law of history: opposites born of each other to confound each other,
confirming Marxs doctrine quite otherwise than he believed or wished.
Let us now consider the third state of economic matter: the gaseous state.
Economy in its gaseous state is Credit.
16
We do not deny that this is partly due to the Communists and above all, to the fear of communism.
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43.
Money in its gaseous state and the evolution of miserliness
In the beginning, all goods served as money for the purchase of all other goods, unless they were
related to a conventional one. This is why our language preserves traces of the custom (older than
language itself) of evaluating a patrimony in heads of cattle (stock) and of counting small sums in
handfuls of salt (salary).
Phoenician navigators, traffickers of genius, invented the gold-silver money which was such an
exact representation of wealth that people took the one for the other.
Miser is the name given to someone who mistakes the representation for the thing represented.
Miserliness is not just an attachment to earthly goods: it is the very opposite. Miserliness is a
mistake (a sin against Knowledge) concerning the nature of the money to which it is attached.
How many men it has ruined! I am not speaking of their loss of soul: I mean that it has ruined them
body and earthly goods.
The story of Midas (who ended up with an asss ears) is a good example. He begged Bacchus, who
owed him a favour, to grant him that everything would turn into gold at his touch. And the god, who
had been drinking his wine and found the Kings stupidity amusing, granted his wish. And gold being
anything but edible, the richest of men found himself starving to death.
The conquest of America by the Spaniards is another tragic illustration of the same fact. The cause
was their thirst for gold. The result was the ruin of the Kingdom of Spain.
Even if they had brought back ten times as much gold as there was currency in the world, the
conquerors, at the price of so much effort, danger and bloodshed, could only make gold lose nine-tenths
of its value.
Besides, no sooner was conquest achieved than all the gold of Peru plus all the gold of Spain was
in the hands of the Flemish and other peoples who had played no part in the expedition. For the gold
acquired in battle and spent in magnificence flows down into the valley as quickly as water to join
ingenious and hard-working people and cultivated land.
At the same time, the Puritans of England and Holland were seeking refuge on the same continent
in quest of land where they could live and work and a quarter of the worlds gold is now in their
hands.
At the opening of the new age, other navigators and traders no less adventurous and inventive than
the Phoenicians (by name the English) discovered paper money and put their knowledge of Good and
Evil to use in algebraic operations thus causing finance to change into its gaseous state.
Money is not merchandise, but a promise of merchandise. The banknote is not money, but a
promise of money.
This promise carries the guarantee of the sovereign state. One can and must be so sure of the States
guarantee that it becomes unnecessary and even preposterous to go to the bank and ask for money every
time one is paid. The promise is therefore destined to remain a promise and the possession of the
banknote ensures that we shall never see the money. But whats the use of seeing when believing is
enough?
By age-long distillation, the Effigy which is the subtle essence of money is extracted like the
perfume of a flower. As for the mass of metal, it is relegated to the shade. Cumbersome and difficult to
transport, it is better left in the vaults of the Bank.
The first bank to issue notes was given that priviledge by a King of England in acknowledgement
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of a big sum of money it had lent him. The security for the notes was the said sum, in consequence,
the word of the said King, so that whoever possessed a note could count on the formal declaration that
the money it represented was missing from the Bank. The trick came off, puffed up the finances of the
Kingdom and as a result the Bank of England was founded, the model for the other national banks.
The banks reserves should suffice to meet the creditors demands. It is unlikely that all bearers of
banknotes will come and claim their due at the same moment. Not unless they panic, as was the case in
France for assignats. Even if the public have not yet lost the habit of encumbering themselves with
money it is in nobodys interest to have it proved to him that his banknote is worth nothing. It suits
everybody to take it at face-value and their trust confers on it the value it might otherwise lack.
The mystery (for the citizen) that surrounds the sum of the deposits lying dormant and well-guarded
in the Treasury assures the latter of an elasticity which the clever know how to use to their advantage.
Nevertheless, they must respect the laws of dilatation and the limits beyond which there is danger
of bursting. The limits are inflation and bankruptcy. The Exchange may at any moment rise or fall
according to events and information, just as the pressure of steam varies with temperature.
Harpagon, the miser, no longer knows what to cling to: the very foundations of miserliness are
shaken. The subtilization of specie should in all logic eliminate this capital sin.
No doubt one can still find people who moan about the terrible cost of living and who live on
the interest from the interest on their private incomes. You can still see poor rich people torturing a
shrinking purse and paying their bills with a grimace that looks as if they were having a tooth extracted.
But those are provincial, backward persons. Harpagon is dead: the inheritance has gone to his son, the
Moneyed Man.
The moneyed man is so unwilling to keep money or to look at it that he might seem generous.
His father, if he saw him, would call him a madman, mad as a man in love or a poet, and he would
disown him.
But he would be mistaken. Like Harpagon, he thinks only of money. He does nothing for nothing
and everything is profitable to him, even his pastimes and friendly relations.
Not that he spends much on entertainment: he finds it so much more entertaining to gain. Therefore
he immediately puts back into business the money he has gained from business, so as to widen the
whirlpool of business. The vanity of this agitation going round in circles is obvious but not to him.
He takes it for the most important thing there is. Such is the decoy named Avarice. The father was
miserly, the son is greedy, but the wise man of old had only one word for it, Avarice, not without
reason.
Passion takes the form of its object and the colour of the circumstances. No vice is cured by force
of circumstance. Economic conditions, far from explaining the whole of mans behaviour, do not
even take into account what seems to be directly connected with them: avarice.
One more remark: there are tax-collectors, even treasurers for pious works, who make do with a
meagre salary uncomplainingly, but, for the sake of their till, commit exaction with callous and cunning
ruthlessness.
Disinterested, devoted avarice: gratuitous avarice.
Which leads us to think that the abolition of property would do avarice no harm but would simply
drive it to take more abstract and more devious forms.
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44.
The Philosophy of Finance
There are moments in the life of a man when the lack of a sum of money bars the way to his hope
or drives him from his home or separates him from his dear ones or exposes him to ruin or prison or
even to death. If he has no friends, or if, as sometimes happens, all his friends are suddenly poor that
day, he will be glad to find a money-lender willing to help.
And yet the world is full of ingratitude towards this sort of saviour.
Religious malediction and the rigours of the law pursue him.
If I had to defend him, I would say, Is it not the rule, in exchange for goods and service to ask as
much as the customer is willing to give?
Which of you, if he possesses a plot of land around which the neighbouring town has finally spread
will refuse (when pressed on all sides) to let it go for ten times more than he paid for it?
And even if it were a hundred times more, what would be wrong about it?
A two-roomed flat in Paris or in Nice is dearer to rent than a chteau on Mount Lozre. If this
iniquity arouses your indignation, go and demonstrate in the street and demand the abolition of the
Law-of-Offer-and-Demand.
Whatever the case may be, the rule is that interest exacted on a loan should not exceed five per
cent. For so little, it is not worth your while to risk losing both the money lent and the interest on it,
not to mention the lawsuits and quarrels. Better to buy land or a business; the fruit thereof will be the
legitimate child of your money.
The investment of your money, that is to say the purchase of a share in some industrial or commercial property or some maritime concern, takes the middle course between the loan at interest and the
setting up of a business. The Company in which you engage your money owes you not just the interest
on your contribution but a proportional share of its profits.
These may be as high as any a moneylender extorts from his debtors, but this time the thing is quite
lawful, as we have explained.
Now, a business which has been good for some years may decline, whereas others, after a difficult
start, look promising. Sell your shares, then, in the business at the peak of its success just before it
collapses and jump on to one on the rise.
Repeat the operation as often as you can. The influx of gas will make your capital fizz.
This is called speculation: the word means playing with mirrors and applies to the jugglery of
financiers as well as to that of philosophers.
It is a common practice to start by borrowing in order to set up a business, then, with the first profits
and if these are not sufficient, with other loans, to begin repayment. The rotation of business fills the
first vacuum, creating a new vacuum which sucks in a new influx, just as the explosion and expulsion
of gas make an engine work.
But should only one link break, the whole chain is broken. This explains the crises, as periodical as
they are unforeseeable, that hit the richest countries. Artificial avalanches or rather, the natural collapse
of mountains of makebelieve.
***
Standing in front of its pillars,
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I asked, What is this Temple?
I was told, The Stock Exchange.
***
We have gone a long way from the link between Work and Wealth, Virtue and Fortune, Divine
Benediction and Properity. We look down on these nave justifications when we look at them from the
heights of the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.
But how near we have come to the true nature of possession. Woe to the wealthy!, says the Book,
bluntly without distinction and without explanation.
45.
The Neutrality of Economy
If you want to know what economy is, go to Tivoli just outside Rome. There, from the top of the
rocks, among the cypress trees and the hanging greenery, I once saw wild waterfalls foaming. There, the
ancients, struck by the holiness of the site, raised temples. The ruins still crown the heights, prolonged
by the column of a great cloud.
There, Virgil, Horatius and Tibullus dreamed and chanted. There, Leonardo hesitated and meditated, trembling as he took his brush. There, Claude Lorrain and Corot were exalted in self-recollection.
Then Economy came. She came, she saw, she conquered. She laid her drainpipes and poured her
carefully calculated tons of concrete and that was the end of the riot of dreams and wild water.
But what is this crime that no code of law or morals has foreseen?
And what about that lamp in front of the main altar an electric bulb, a mechanical offering at
low cost, the Devils sneer in guise of perpetual worship!
You see, people say, its so economical! And sick at heart, I look at the new object, the cute little
gadget.
It is nickelplated, the clever little contraption, the slick gadget, or it may be made of rose colored
plastic. It bobs up and down and is shiny, it stinks and farts. It is horribly handy and pretty and costs
horribly little.
In what remote corner of the world is there shelter from the users, traffickers and manufacturers of
little gadgets? Forests and mountains used to provide sure refuge. Today, the Himalaya and the two
poles are threatened with invasion and the desert spoiled.
Homo economicus is a new race of barbarian invaders. From where do they come? Neither from
the East nor from the West. They come from under the earth, a species of clever, twisted dwarfs.
As soon as they swarm upon a rich country, they are like locusts on the harvest, like the fire of war
which leaves only blackness and ashes.
But whereas after a war, wheat rises again and ruins are rebuilt, wherever homo economicus has
spread his conquest, the grass never grows again. The nibbling of lucre is lasting desolation. In the
invisible as in the visible.
Look at mining country, or at St. Etienne or Als. Recognize the image of evil, the colour, the
smell, the voice of Evil.
What Evil? They are places of work, not pleasure. They are sources of strength and wealth, not
of inspiration. Spiritually, economy is neutral.
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It is to the neutral that Dante assigns the first sty in Hell. Ill-born souls, the prey of a whirlwind of
ceaseless agitation and who do not seem worthy of any rest. And now is the reign of these mediocre
angels who rallied neither God nor the Devil.
. . . Ma per se foro
But were for themselves (alone).
The tree is judged by its fruits. The methodical, laborious, conscientious preparation of the Bomb
is the already-ripe fruit of economys infernal neutrality.
Economy is the exploitation of the most precious gifts of the Spirit: reason, knowledge, prudence,
patience, strength and perseverance all deviated from the truth and entirely devoted to utility and profit:
the very biting of the Fruit-of-Knowledge.
46.
Political Economy
We have just defined economy and before that, modern science, science separated from Wisdom,
foreign to piety; science without conscience, prostituted to lucre, bondservant of utility.
To find out what an Economic Science can be, you need only add up the two. Like jam on butter:
a double spread of mischief.
It makes the clever boys of today lick their chops. They have their mouths full of it and all their
explanations of all things, as well as their justifications and condemnations, hang on its absolute laws.
The first thing to establish is whether such a science exists or is possible.
Economic life is the sum of innumerable acts of which the motives are hidden in mens entrails
beyond the scope of scientific observation. To apply objective study and the calculation of probability
to the fluctuations of phenomena is to leave unbridged the gulf that separates cause and effect, being
and knowledge.
In fact, Political Economy competes with meteorology for the last place in forecasting tomorrows
weather and with academic medicine for the last place in finding a cure for human misery.
Nothing, says Jacques Ellul, has shown more clearly the vanity of political economy than its
contradictory explanations and contradictory remedies concerning crises. For some, the cause is an
unsellable surplus of goods, for others, insufficient productions; for some, excessive saving, for others,
too little. As for the remedies, some say the bank rate of discount should be raised, others, that it should
be lowered; another says wages should be stabilized, another, that they should be decreased.17
Whereas there is only one science of physics, one of geometry and one of entomology, there are
almost as many Political Economies as economists! There are as many as there are political partisans.
Which shows that it is only a presumptive science, a junkshop of notions, recipes and doctrines, an
arsenal of arguments for opinion.
Not that there is a lack of matter for serious study. The matter is there, in bulk and by bagfuls.
Purchase, Sale, Management, Productivity, Income from Landed Property and Real Estate. Inheritance,
Division, Dowry and Donation intervivos. Plant, Technical Equipment for Agricultural and Industrial Concerns. Livestock and Farm Implements, Farmleasing, Dairy Farming, the Flour Trade. Wages,
Trade Unions, Cooperatives, Big Companies, Joint Stock Companies with Limited Liability, Monopoly,
17
Jacques Ellul, La Technique ou lEnjeu du Sicle (III, 2).
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Trusts, Wholesale and Retail Businesses, Hawking Markets and Exhibitions. Bonded Warehouses, Auction Sales and Fairs. Accountancy, Agency, Advertising, Banking, the Stock Exchange, the Customs,
the National Savings Bank and Pawnbroking. The Cheque, the Commercial Draft, Quotation, Title
Deeds, Assessment, Rents and Leases. National Health Service, Public Relief, Emigration, Exportation, Mines, Ports, Transport. Sport, Racing and Betting. Invoices and Freight, Housing, and the Press,
Shipyards and Philanthropical Institutions, Inland Revenue, the Budget, the National Deficit, Bingo and
Treasury Bonds, the Forestry Commission, Civil Engineering, Canals and Dams. Gambling, Subsidies
to Laboratories and Observatories, Patents and Royalties, Oil and Heavy Water, the Pool, Automation
and the Atomic Pile. Unemployment, Strike, Lock-out, Crashes, Booms, Freezing of Credit, Inflation,
Crisis, National Defence, Shows, Fashion, Arts and Crafts and Tourism, the Balance Sheet of Religious
Congregations, Philately. . .
An inventory which, far from being an invention of Master Alcofribas Nasier, is only a dry outline of elementary subjects, to which should be added the list of Utopias, three quarters of Civil Law,
Commercial Law, Statistics and an important chapter of Universal History.
***
The irreparable need of Modern Science is the Need for a scientist who knows it.
There is not a scientist who knows even one science nor half of one.
Consequently, instead of containing his science and being enlightened and greatened by it, he is
contained in it and drowned.
The speck of real which he sees through his glasses, precise and magnified, hides all the rest.
But truth is: everything. To have a bit of truth is not to have truth at all. To take a bit for all of it is
to lose all of it.
The economist is in this case, even though his science is not a science. This makes him particularly
apt to blunder.
Economic movement is the consequence of all the urges of life springing from all levels, from the
lowest to the highest and there is no common measure between them.
Therefore even a complete view of economic movement could not at all account for life.
But where is the expert who has a complete view of economic movement?
47.
The Degradation of Morality into Economy

Economy is one of the moral and political sciences.
Economy.
Science.
Morals.
Politics.
The four things afloat are in danger of gliding into one another and making a troublesome mixture.
Economy by itself (not as a science but as mere concern about the useful) is already a wrong
inclination of Morality and so to speak, its weight. Any morality that is not animated by love of God
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sinks into economy: from the spirit of sacrifice and service, which is religion, it degenerates into the
spirit of profit, which is the spirit of the beast and its crowned horn. It is the morality of periods of
decadence.
Economy is the morality of the man armed with intelligence. I say armed, for the snake has its
venom, the wolf its fangs and man his intelligence to prevail over other beasts and other men.
However, leaping on ones prey, showing ones teeth and giving free rein to all the instincts of the
beast is stupid, crazy, unworthy of a rational animal. For, however strong you may be, you will always
meet somebody stronger barring the path or somebody more deceitful who will trip you up or ten weak
men in league to strike you down. It is therefore more expedient to arm oneself with propriety and to
have recourse to virtue.
Bentham and a whole school of English philosophers have shown that morality is merely utility
well conceived. But the civilized, who are clever monkeys, had no need of philosophical demonstration to see this.
At the extreme opposite, let us consider the law of Moses or the law of Manu, the Koran or the
Commandments of the Christian church. Everywhere, we find things forbidden for reasons that seem
meaningless to those who do not understand that the point is to resist step by step the spirit of this
world, the facility of the broad path, the primacy of the practical, vulgar haste, mean exactness and total
exploitation, in short, to avoid Economy.
Proof of this is: the sabbatical year during which, every seven years, Gods people suspended
all productive work and all transactions, inquired into all the acquisitions of the previous years and reestablished in their original properties the families who had lost or sold them. Most religious observance
is, as they say, flying in the face of common sense the sense of common people being to grab as much
as they can.
48.
The Lapse from Religion into Science
Moral economy has always, among all nations, been the warp and weft of social life. The two
sources of economic morality for us are the Penal Code and Public Opinion. To stick to economic
morality would be to economize useless trouble such as scruples, remorse and penitence and various
unproductive activities or hindrances to activity.
But to respect the law, to win other peoples respect, to be happy in business and in love all that
saves no-one from a dissatisfied conscience.
For when Conscience makes us conceive the eternal and let us know that time is passing and that
tomorrow we shall be dead, she lets us know the truth and know that we do not know it; she makes
us see perfection and at the same time the immensity of our faults. Enough to make us feel disgusted
with our very advantages and achievements. Religion teaches that this trouble will not end until we are
delivered from the bondage of sin which is the law of this world! But the world defends itself and
tries to find its peace in getting rid of religion and turning its back on the Absolute.
In this effort, the coming of the reign of modern science has brought it powerful help. Indeed, we
are poorly armed against metaphysical anxiety so long as we can counter it only with the cavilling of
doubt, vulgar irony or the revolt of animal instinct, for man has also spiritual needs and instincts which
can never be satisfied with simple denial or by joking. But Science rears itself up with imposing structures and a whole system of proof. It boasts of being subservient to no philosophy, just as philosophy
boasted of not being the servant of theology. It is a thing detached from a thing detached. It draws its
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truths directly from nature. Every time that its affirmations meet with those of faith and the scriptures,
it contradicts them formally. But this opposition is not accidental or a matter of detail: it is in the very
attitude of Modern Science which is entirely foreign to the spirit, to inner life and worship and strains
unreservedly after Possession and Power.
The world, then, wonders after Science, which has become the religion of those who do not want
religion.
To have faith in Science is to believe in what one knows, whereas true faith is knowledge of Mystery: it is to believe that Science knows everything except what it will know tomorrow; it is to consider
proved that what Science cannot prove, does not exist.
Science detached from Religion and from all Wisdom finds itself, on the other hand, attached to
Technique and consequently to Economy whose instrument and servant she is.
She serves to fortify it in practice as well as to justify it by doctrine.
But nothing could fulfill this function more efficiently than Economic Science. Science establishes its laws on the observation of facts. These laws will then have to be respected in order to go on
in the same way. Economic morality draws a thread from science, spins itself a cocoon impermeable to
any influx or perturbation from above, and rolls herself up in it.
49.
The Lapse into Politics
We have pointed out how vague, mixed and muddled Morality, Economics and Science are. There
remains the fourth term: Politics. Which brings us back to Marx.
Marx is in revolt on two fronts and even on three.
Against the Absolute and its traditions, he is one of the voices of the World shouting for liberation
from every constraint imposed in the name of Religion or other mysterious imperatives. At one stroke
he cuts through the Gordian knot of theology and metaphysics the stroke of economic explanation.
The stroke that puts an end to all the subtleties of controversies and of professions of faith is to give
out as scientifically proven that all that is mere pretence and dust thrown in the eyes of the people, an
exploitation of their credulity in order to gain honours and fortune. Or again, that all that is idle claptrap
and an illusion an almost irresistible illusion of reason going round in circles. Religious dogma
and great systems of belief are only ideal projections of the infrastructures: in other words, of the
social relations imposed by the economy of the times and it will be enough to study the one to know the
other and refute it.
On the other hand, Marx does not accept the economic regime such as avarice and malice have
established it and he sets himself up as the defender of its victims. He attacks bourgeois economy, as
well as the economists who preceded him, accusing them of pretending to justify it. He claims that,
unlike theirs, his economy is truly scientific.
But in fact he does not enrich economic science with any new discovery, nor make any contribution
to it, but merely draws upon it for arguments, and even these he owes more often than not to his
adversaries, the bourgeois economists. His criticism turns out to be an essay on the Concept of Value,
which is neither Economy nor Science, but Philosophy pure and simple.
Thus, as philosopher, Marx is an economist, but as an economist, he is a philosopher. As they say
in Normandy, for a year for apples, there are apples, but for a good year for apples, there are no apples.
The fact that he attacks all philosophers is another reason for calling him a philosopher, for it is the
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common characteristic of philosophers to attack all other philosophers.
The fact that he attacks philosophy itself changes nothing. A cow never takes it into her head to
attack philosophy, only a philosopher can do so and only with philosophical arguments. (I shall not go
so far as to affirm that he can thus avoid contradicting himself.)
But what do contradictions matter? And absolute truth? Nothing is absolute. Praxis is more
important than gnosis.18 What matters is not so much to speculate as to stimulate. Supposing we had
built a perfect system, of what use would it be? The point is to supply the Revolutionary movement
with a stock of catchwords, unanswerable arguments, all-round answers we can rally. When our cause
has triumphed, we shall impose our truth by crushing our contradictors and by educating the people and
the rising generation in our way.
Ah! Now I see that both as an economist and as a philosopher, Marx is a politician!
And yet he is not a political man. He never occupied any post or tried to seize power. He was
neither a leader of men nor a conspirator. He is quite the opposite of the democratic leader whose
speeches stir the very entrails of the common people and whose facile phrases stick in your ears like a
tune you cant get rid of.
In his preface to one of Marxs works, Lenin bluntly says that there is no Marxist capable of
understanding Marx, since to understand him one must have read Hegel. He lays down as a principle
that this would be an undertaking beyond human strength, in which he is not quite wrong.
The undertaking remains to read Marx himself, or at least Das Kapital which fills a whole libraryshelf. To study it would take long months of reading, previous to which one should have read his
predecessors, Mill, Smith, MacCullogh, Ricardo, Sigismondi. . . The second and third books of Das
Kapital were published by Engels after the death of the author, and the said Engels admits that the
original manuscripts was presentable only after serious pruning and that in order to prepare it for the
printer, it was necessary first to decompose infinitely long intertangled sentences. . .
Fervent Marxists have told me that Marx is quite unreadable, in which they are not quite right.
Generally, they content themselves with short summaries and so miss the most forceful and the
only convincing pages of the work, while they make a display of the shortened and flattened theory of
value and its resulting fallacies.
You can find brilliant formulae like this:

This one determines the Plus Value given by Over-Work. Its only weakness is that none of
the elements of the equation can be put into figures. It is rather like the amusing discoveries of Doktor
Nimbus and his colleague Professor Cosinus.
The forceful and only convincing thing in Das Kapital is: the facts. The investigations, the conversations, the descriptions which unroll before our eyes the gloomy fresco of working class life in
18
Praxis = action, gnosis = knowledge.
106
the most properous country of the time: London, the Black Babylon, Reverberation under the
smoke. . . reverberation is the smoke of din.19 Men mouldering in cellars, parching in foundries sixteen
hours a day or sixteen hours a night, children on all fours pulling the threads of looms. The little dressmaker who dies after three consecutive days of work in a cramped room because at all costs (even at
the cost of life) she must finish the growns for the Royal Ball.
Eloquent, too, the statistics, accounts and rates of pay of certain firms.
But that such a mountain of documents and arguments should be accessible to the mass is quite out
of question.
50.
The Master Word of the Revolution
One may well wonder for what reason or by what miracle such a work has managed to upset the
world.
The fact is that Marx is one of the rare men who have said only one thing.
Among all the thousands of authors each more gifted than the other, Marx alone has said only one
thing.
A thing that nobody else had said. It was there for everyone to see, but nobody saw it because
nobody had said it. The fact is that people do not believe their eyes: they wait till they have heard
something said in order to judge it through other peoples eyes. But in order to open all eyes to a thing
that nobody has said, there has to be a man who sees only that thing and speaks of it alone.
Marx spoke of it for twenty or thirty years, and there it is: the exploitation of man by man that
is the whole evil of the world.
Those who take themselves for the best and who get others to believe it, the Great, the Leaders, the
Judges, the Fathers, the Masters are all parasites perched on the back of the mass of workers.
The hundred thousand years war, the war that lasts throughout history, is the war between the fat
and the lean.20
As an economist, Marx describes in detail the parts of the great machine-for-grinding down men
called Modern Industry.
As a historian, he shows up the stage-setting and the garb in which those great adventurers, the
hunters of human game, masquerade.
As a philosopher, he refutes the moral justification , the political intrigue, the religious alibi and
the philosophical consolation which serve to elude the only solution.
As a revolutionary, he announces the approach of the only outcome for which the times are ripe:
and as evil and disorder increase, the nearer we are to the outcome: that the Last take over power, take
possession of the earth and all its goods by the might and right of number and thus put an end to war,
division, want and bondage.
Which is the very subject of this book: the chain of calamity and crime forged by the spirit of lucre,
the only difference being that this book has several chapters whereas Marx has only one.
Therein lies his strength.
19
20
Victor Hugo in William Shakespeare, II

Breughels picture.
107
And the reverse of his strength.
Excess and narrowness, strength and weakness of the whole movement that has sprung from him
and reflects him.
But it may be that his thought (to speak as he speaks of all thought) is merely the reflection of that
movement.
51.
Where are the Christians?

If this is so, where are the Christians, and what are they doing?
What have they done to defend the poor and relieve the oppressed?
Why is the Revolution taking place without them? Is it perhaps because they are forbidden to shed
blood?
But they do shed it, without measure or scruple. Only, they are on the other side.
Indeed? But why is the revolution taking place against them?
Why do the defenders of the poor hate them, hate them more than they hate their other enemies?
How can they mock the Almighty, the God of the Christians, unpunished?
The answer is on every page of the Bible.
Throughout the ages, the holy People has made sacrifice to idols and prostituted itself to the Baals
of the Nations.
And now it has given itself to Mammon and the Prince of this World.
That is why This is the Word of the Lord! cries the prophet. This is why God has called up
the King of Babylon against them. . .
And there will be havoc and massacre and perhaps the abomination of desolation in the Holy Place
they have turned into a den of thieves. . .
O my people, my people! I do not wish your death, but repent and return!
Which does not mean that the instrument of the Wrath and the curse of God is not itself cursed and
damned.
52.
Materialism
The King of Babylon, my Servant says the Bible. If the King of Babylon is the Servant of God
against His chosen people, if Marx and the Godless are the sword-bearers of Justice how are we to
untwine Good from Evil in this interplay of roles reversed? How are we to know whether God wants
us to fight on the side of the Good in order to uphold time-honoured wrongdoing or on the side of the
Wicked for a better world?
Since everything begins in thought let us see what the doctrine of the righters of wrongs has to
say, for it contains the root and seed of their action. If their doctrine is true, we shall have to put up with
the disturbances brought about by its application and look upon them as inevitable but temporary. If it
is false, then even the advantages resulting from it must be looked upon as apparent or accidental, and
the order set up by it as disturbance which can only grow worse and worse.
108
Their doctrine is not secret, and they are eager to share it, neither is it difficult to see through, and
there is no need to be initiated into the Great Mysteries of Eleusis to visit the shallow caves of their
materialism.
Matter contrary to common opinion is never obvious. The phenomenon21 alone is given and
the instruments of precision can only present new aspects of it but cannot give any precise information
about the relation between Appearance and what lies underneath, that is to say, substance.
The definition of matter as outer substance contains insuperable contradiction and the existence
of matter is as difficult to prove objectively as that of God, even more so. To affirm that it is, that it
is Being and that there is nothing else, requires an act of faith of which, by the way, the believer is
unaware. He sees it as an observation of fact and as self-evident, which is the essential characteristic
of blind faith. This explains the frequently dogmatic and fanatical nature of this mental attitude as well
as its aggressive and negative aspects. But this belief which believes itself to be knowledge is not an
adherence to the spirit, but an aversion to everything spiritual, a voluntary mutilation, a self-denial that
demands explanation.
All knowledge presupposes two poles: the subject and the object. It puts them into communication
and the relation between them is called truth. Error comes from imagination and the subjects faculty
of inventing forms which replace or add to the object and give his desires forms which he takes for
objects. Materialism (like every other school of philosophical thought) wants to find a means of doing
away with error, but has found nothing better or more definitive than to do away with the Subject.
Just as someone might saw off the branch he is sitting on.
Of the subject, they keep only the body, which is an object and obvious. But is the spirit obvious?
It is not. Let us tidy it away then among futile things. And are the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal,
the Perfect obvious? They are not. Therefore they are inventions by the subject.
Materialism is the Spirit turned against itself and choosing its opposite, choosing the outside instead
of the inside, the lower instead of the higher, a reversal of cosmic order and the hierarchy of value,
subversion systematized.
It is the philosophy suitable to the revolution for the reign of the Mass.
53.
Materialists
It would be wrong to see Materialism only as the growling of an ill-tempered beast. On the contrary,
it is sometimes the expression of an insatiable thirst for sincerity, for equality, for self-effacement, for
confused and obscure communion, arising from bitter disappointment of the absolute.
Then one discovers that the professed materialist, is endowed with tact and tenderness, Christian
virtues all the more astonishing as they are quite gratuitous, for there are none in the system, quite as
astonishing as their absence in so many Christians, the rarest virtue in all men no doubt being coherence.
54.
The Strength and Weakness of Revolt
The whole strength of this philosophy of Revolt is the weakness of its adversaries, its whole truth
is their lying, their attachment to material goods, their compromise with wealth, power, science and
mechanics in short, their materialism aggravated by hypocrisy.
21
A word that means appearance.
109
To reverse Leibnizs remark on the various philosophies, one might say It is right in what it denies,
wrong in what it affirms.22
That is why all its strength appears in struggle and all its weakness in triumph.
55.
Good-natured in Misfortune, ill-natured in Good
When the militant Marxist is in a persecuted minority, he always has the best role, the role that
should be the Christians but which the Christian has let him take over. Then he uses all his strength,
which always comes to him from his adversarys lack of it. For Power finds its place in lack of power.
He is the salt of the earth, the yeast in the dough, the poor for the spirit, the Good News announced
to the poor, the witness, the victim offered up for all.
It is thanks to him, to the resistance he preaches, to the struggle he leads, to the fear he inspires
that workers are no longer subjected to starvation wages and sixteen-hour-days condemned to live in
slums and dirt, abandoned in illness, old age and unemployment and not thanks to the good grace
and charity of their employers.
It is he who denounces financial, political, police, military, colonial and judiciary scandal, who demands the abolition of wrongdoing, the cessation of war, the union of workers, the freedom of oppressed
peoples, peace for the savage and the black man.
But no sooner is he rid of his enemies, no sooner are his hands free to do what he wanted, no
sooner does he dictate his law than he becomes iniquitous, brutal, cruel, callous, treacherous, untruthful,
implacable, pitiless and inhuman.
How does this strange change come about?
There is no change: it is simply that the wheel has come full cycle and that at last we see the whole
thing.
56.
Matter and Death
Matter is heaviness, impenetrability, inertia or chance agitation. It is separation and death. The
outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
57.
The Materialistic Doctrine of Salvation
Materialism, by showing man the baseness of his nature, the vanity of his efforts, the childishness
of his beliefs, should in all logic strengthen attachment, and greed of gain, do away with the foundations
of moral restraint and limit man to seeking immediate pleasure and the satisfaction of elementary needs.
By confronting him with the absurdity of the world and the frailty of his reasons for living, it should in
logic drive him to despair.
But it was the task of philosophers like Marx to veil and falsify his logic.
The same headless and inconsistent faith that grants existence to matter can just as easily attribute
to it qualities which its definition does not contain, and even excludes, such as the power to engender
22
All, says Leibniz, are right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny.
110
Life by dint of friction and length of time, for example, and Spirit by a little more rubbing.
Thus, always providing that we are not too exacting in the control of the real operations of matter
and the mental operations of the materialist we can stuff up the hole left in the Principle by the removal of the Creator. Similarly, we can provide against the lack of Providence and save inconsequential
Western optimism by means of three myths, namely, Progress, Evolution and the Dialectics of History,
which supply the indispensable illusions and stimulants to action and are conterfeits of the virtue of
hope.
Progress is an invention of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an example of what Marx calls
Ideal projections of infrastructures in the shape of philosophical theories (which is true of all wrong
theories). The development of Trade, Industry, Liberty, Science, Education, Democracy and other
similar beautiful novelties and the intoxication they induce have made Civilization appear to be a direct
road to more and more radiant unknown lands, and the ever greater catastrophes that mark each stage
of this development have not yet sobered the worshippers of the Beast.
History shows nothing like continuous growth, and no grandeur without decadence. To attribute
to mankind a more and more savage and stupid character the further one goes back in time, one has to
be as invincibly ignorant as the doctrinaire, seeing that the most ancient monuments (whether of stone
or of language) are those that testify to the highest conceptions and the purest art. On the other hand,
we have before our eyes peoples who yesterday were civilized and now are barbarian and we know that
civilizations are mortal and condemned beforehand.
But the biological and paleontological theories of evolution, widely popularized for propaganda
purposes, have ensured superlatively scientific foundations to the demagogy of Progress.
The struggle for life and natural selection are given the role of the force that creates all perfection, just as competition stimulates production, improves quality and lowers the price of merchandise!
Amoeba and infusoria tossed about by fortune, have crossed the threshold of the kingdoms, gone up the
scale of the species and now appear with the face and dress of Homo Sapiens.
Evolution is not a modern discovery. It figures in the oldest Hindu texts and throughout the Bible.
As the word implies, it is an unrolling, the circling of a circle traced beforehand, not an accidental
ascension in empty space, or an aimless rise that creates its own height. Higher than height is the
Principle from which all has come like breath exhaled, and into which though not without vicissitude
all will happily return. The new thing in these newest theories of evolution is absurdity.23
That something should come out of nothing, that the lesser should produce the greater, that matter
should create Spirit, that is indeed new!
58.
Dialectics
Social Progress and Natural Evolution fuse and culminate in Karl Marxs Dialectics of History.
By means of his Dialectics of History, Marx breathes into his Historical Materialism the almost
religious inspiration without which he would be powerless against Religion. He gives out a Law, Dogma
and almost Messianic promises. He crowns Universal History with a Last Judgement, the Great Eveof-the-Revolution. This will ensure the Coming of the Kingdom which will be nothing other than the
Socialist Republic.
23
Even when revised and corrected by the subtle Bergson in his Creative Evolution (the very title is nonsensical) or by the
Reverend Teilhard de Chardin so strangely a stranger to all Christian thought and spiritual tradition with his noosphere and
his collectivization of consciences.
111
However, the Dialectics of History, the doctrine now so firmly tagged to Marxs name, is not his (no
more than is his theory of value). He took it from the philosopher who best deserves the condemnation,
anger and sarcasm he lavishes on the whole of philosophy, to that most alienated of philosophers, Hegel,
the absolute idealist.
He did not even have to turn the method of the absolute idealist upside down to incorporate it in his
Historic Materialism since Hegel had already applied it to History,24 at the same time demonstrating
how to manipulate, twist and square men, nations, events, works of art, documents and monuments to
make them fit into his philosophy, that locomotive pushing its driving-rods and advancing by the turn
of a wheel at every puff of steam. Hegels eschatological visions are undoubtedly not the same as those
of Marx. A good citizen, a conservative, a great justifier of all that is, the illustrious professor saw as
the supreme achievement of that civilization, the German Nation, and, need it be said, as the supreme
achievement of the German Nation, his own person. Now, everything rational being real. . . and such
theorems being the sequel of his Logic. . . we shall not insist.
Reversing the engine, Marx arrives at the obvious fact that the supreme achievement of History
will be the triumph of the Proletariat and the social paradise open to all.
59.
Metaphysical Crimes and Punishments

Dialectics is not a new doctrine either. It is neither of Marxs brewing nor of Hegels.
The play of contrasts and their conciliation in a unity which surpasses both is a theme that occurs
in the very dawn of human thought. The Sages of ancient China used to contemplate Ying and Yang
concerting in the circle of the Unique Principle. And Lao Tseu shows how contraries engender each
other and are effaced in the Tao.
The most accomplished form of this doctrine in Western thought is De Docta Ignorantia by Nicolas
Bishop of Cusa who shows with mathematical exactness that the Infinite is a fire which transmutes
everything that enters it, that it makes forms melt into each other, ensures the passage of the curve into
the straight line and unites the parallels, the Yes and the No and finally the World and God.
In the Zend Avesta, in the Vedanta, in the Bible, the world is the conflict between Good and Evil,
between the good that comes out of evil and the evil that comes out of good, between good fighting
good and evil fighting evil, all inextricably intertangled until the victory of the Unique One, of the One
in which there is nothing double, troubled, dark or vain, of the One who is That-Which-Is and in whom
everything we know is annihilated.
What is new in the new dialectics is that universal and traditional truths have gone mad there.25
The ignorance is voluntary, a furious refusal to consider the plane on which opposites are reconciled, that of the Infinite, apart from which there is only conflict, confusion and mixture.
The first question raises by Hegel in his Logic is that of Being as opposed to Non-Being in a
debate a dialectic of which the Solution is a third term guess what?
Becoming! says Hegel.
And here we are, plunged again into conflict, confusion and mixture. Here we are, back on the
plane where Being and Non-being exclude each other point by point. This is where the mental mix-up
24
Hegels Philosophy of History is defined by one of his contemporaries as the shameful parts of his system.
It is on purpose that I have used Chestertons statement that our world is full of Christian virtues gone mad. I call them
universal and traditional because The Christian religion has been known since the beginning of the world, but it is only since
the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh that we call it Christian. (St. Augustine Retract. II)
25
112
of Being and Non-Being makes all things pass, and things which pass show that they cannot be but can
only appear.
In God alone do Being and Non-Being mysteriously contain each other.26
The top button of the Professors overcoat having encountered the wrong buttonhole, Hegels Logic
is wrongly buttoned all the way down.
Now, if the master idealist failed because he could not rise above the plane of the real, his materialistic disciple was certainly not the man to correct this fundamental twist.
The fact is that oppositions are easy to discover, easy to see even where there are none, and easy to
invent, but their conciliation cannot be found. If, even in thought, where it is so easy to solve everything
because thought is made for truth as the eye is made for light, if, even in thought one remains powerless,
clumsy, heavy and hide-bound, how will one act?
In this philosophy of Marxs, aimed wholly at action, we shall see (and we have already seen) how
the wheel of affliction follows the steps of wrong thinking, and how (there being no pardon for the sin
against the spirit) error culminates in horror, misfortune and crime.
60.
Class Struggle
In the Fable of the limbs and the stomach re-told by La Fontaine, the Patricians of Rome, addressing the Plebeans who had revolted and were on strike, pointed out to them that if the limbs refused
the stomach service on the grounds that it was at rest, warm and sheltered, they could only condemn
themselves to die of hunger.
The rebels allowed themselves to be persuaded, in which they were rather simple-minded for differences of class are first and foremost differences of fortune and of comfort, and not a diversity of
function. Certainly, better conditions entitle one to better education and to a better post, unless they
dispense one from having any post at all. Whatever the case may be, inequalities of fortune and of
comfort are not due to any organic cause.
If wealth were like blood in the body, distributed to all parts, if not in exactly equal quantities, at
least in the exact proportion needed for each function, then there would be no class struggle any more
than there are organs in revolt in a healthy body.
We must strive toward a class-less society, which does not mean a society that has no head and in
which there are no distinctions. Nor does it mean that all should be alike, dispossessed and reduced to
the same grey indifference. On the contrary, each should have room to express what is unique in him.
For this to be achieved, the citizen must never consider wealth as an end or an accomplishment but
only as a means of fulfilling his duty.
Nor should the citizen ever look upon his fellow-citizen as a means toward wealth, but always as
an end, a being precious in himself, whose fulfilment is highly desirable.
For as long as this is not so, the classes will subsist, class struggle will continue as well as the
struggle of each against all.
26
He is, He is not, He is (Principles and Precepts, CLIII). Argument about the existence of God goes round in circles
because people usually forget to establish what is meant by exist and be. It is not sufficiently noticed that the principle of
non-contradiction does not apply to infinite things (see De Docta Ignorantia, The Cloud of Unknowing, The Mystic Theology
of St. Denys). To remember this enables one to understand religious doctrines which present God in positive terms that imply
His negative aspect (e.g. the Christian, Islamite and Israelite religions) as well as those which present God in negative terms
but which are positive religions (e.g. Buddha and Tao).
113
But for such happy order to reign in the human family, can one possibly believe that all that is
necessary is that one class should overcome the others?
And that the last should take the first place?
61.
The Proletariat
The last is the Proletariat.
Proletariat is not a synonym for People or for Working Class either.
In the wide sense of the term, it includes all paid manual workers in town and in the country.
In the narrow sense, more precisely applicable to the problem that agitates the world of today,
it means the mass of manual labourers torn away from the fields and the workshops by big industry
and crammed together for the convenience of production. For the defence of their interests, they have
become a class and a political power. They have in common neither origin, customs nor their education.
What they have in common is that they have nothing, that they have lost themselves since they have
given themselves up for money.
They have sold themselves retail and, so to speak, in slices, cut up into days and hours.
They have neither the means not the right to develop the slightest intelligence in their work, which
has been conceived and determined for them by others. They are forced, broken and ground down by
the Machine to which they are attached. Their labour is that of the beast of burden, but of the beast
harnessed blindfold to the millstone.
No-one describes in detail better than Marx how chain-work empties, debases and stupefies a man
and drives him mad. It is a master stroke of the diabolical Spirit of Lucre and a permanent offence
against humanity. Every step taken to relieve the worker of his toil has been taken for the benefit of
production, and not of the worker, for it goes without saying that the man is made for production and
not production for the man. In consequence, everything takes place as if with intent to attack the most
intimate fibres of Being with sly, refined cruelty. But there is no evil intent, only the hideous innocence
of technique and economy. In one of the most modern factories in America, (one of those which employ
"technicians of human relations") the workers wrists are attached to the machine so that he can keep to
its rhythm more easily and exactly. And so that the chains of total slavery cease to be figures of speech.
Marx attributes the invention of all that, and the blame, to the bloodsucking octopus that Capitalism
is. And to wreak revenge upon that monstrosity, he calls down the wrath of Revolution.
But how is it that his Revolution has brought about no change?
***
Proletarian is a Latin term opposed to Patrician. It represents the state of Progeniture (proles) as
opposed to that of Fathers (patres).
The state of the Father is to have all the rights; the state of the child is to depend, to obey and to
have no rights.
If the Proletariat were a child, it would at least have the right to be loved. If patrons27 were truly
fathers, they would see to bringing their children up so that they should eventually become men and
fathers.
27
The same etymology: patres
114
The history of the Roman Plebs, like that of the working mass of our times, is the sorry history
of the abandoned child left in the street, sent to a National Assistance Home and taken charge of by
strangers who make it their work to profit by him.
The factory, the work-site, the mine are imprisonment with hard labour rather than families and
schools.
On the other hand, although the big abandoned child Proletariat has all the needs and failings, all
the ignorance and incoherence of the child, he has none of its freshness or grace or charm.
He does not have its innocence. His hereditary defects and his lack of education render him subject
with the help of alcohol and promiscuity, to the most sordid vices. Moreover, he has a puerile inclination
to imitate the big ones, those he envies.
He does not have the merciful weakness of the child to guard him from excess, protect him from
himself and inspire protection. In his fits of temper, he is capable of appalling violence which political fortune-hunters have discovered and use to their advantage, the best and most up-to-date way of
exploiting the unfortunate creature.
He is so much the easier to exploit in that, like all ill-bred children, he is particularly open to
the bad advice of playmates while rebellious toward his teachers, be they good or bad. Incredulous,
sneering and posing as a free-thinker concerning everything that comes from above, he blindly follows
the brawlers and the rowdy, ready to swallow any bait so long as it comes from them.
But let us turn to the great socialist writers, from Zola to Barbusse and see what they have to say, not
in their speeches about the Revolution for Freedom, but in those sociological documents, their novels.
Here by those who love them, is the portrait of the disinherited (and they are never loved enough,
provided the love is cool-headed and clear-sighted).
Looking at this cesspool, one wonders, can this be the untouched reserve, the source of purity from
which the great renewal will spring?
62.
Negative Hopes
Perhaps you think me hard on the proletariat. Its not their fault if they are what they are.
No, it is not their fault but is that a reason for seeing them other than they are?
To judge the unfortunate would be doubly unjust. What matters is not to condemn but to observe
and to be hard only on romanticising and political toadying.
But even if what has been said were hard, it cannot compete with their prophets hardness, for Marx
sees no virtue, no quality in the proletariat, unless that of having none.
But nothing could be further from the truth. It is one of those Hegelian simplifications inflicted on
people and things in order to put them into line according to abstractions, in order to place, oppose and
dispose them according to the necessities of a system. Therefore it is not on the latent value of the lower
class that Marx counts to give the new city its character.
No, indeed, but on its lack of value, virtue and qualities.
That is what will deliver the classless society forever from everything that might be called Distinction and which will give it the required uniformity. By acceding to Power, the Proletariat will wipe out
once and for all what has hitherto been the constant character of the leading classes.
115
63.
Four Mistakes concerning a Lack
In which he makes four mistakes: two in principle and two in anticipation. The first: that an evil
by spreading to all becomes a good. The second: that a lack of character can imprint its character on
anything whatever. The third: that the last class, by becoming the first, will not undergo a change of
character. The fourth: that the character which has at all times been that of leaders will change when
the last class has taken over leadership.
About the first point, is there any need to do more than express it clearly and expose it so that the
obviousness of the contrary becomes undeniable?
Does an illness become health because it contaminates everybody?
If wage-earning is slavery, does slavery become freedom when everyone earns wages?
About the second point: if the proletariat has no qualities, virtues or form, nothing can ever come
out of nothing.
But is it true that it is formless and has no character of its own?
64.
The Unauthentic Character of the Proletariat

The character peculiar to the Proletariat is its abnormal character.
There had to be an unheard of and, it has to be said, a scandalous development of modern industry
for the Proletariat to come into existence.
We defined its state as being that of an abandoned child. That is not the normal condition of a
child. Whether he is raised in an orphanage or by a family, he cannot experience the pleasures, the
attachment, the fears and occasions for pride of a child cherished and disciplined by his legitimate and
natural parents.
If there are ten other legitimate children in the family he lives in, what will happen the day that,
rightly or wrongly, he revolts against the father and claims his heritage? He will never be entitled to
speak in the name of the other ten or to violate their rights in compensation of his unhappy lot. He will
have the whole family as well as the Law, against him. And he will get the better of everybody only by
force.
65.
The Proletariat and the People
Peoples Democracy is the name given to a Republic in which the Proletariat imposes its dictatorship.
Which is to say the same thing twice, for Democracy already means Power-of-the-People. But this
pleonasm is a double lie, for the Proletariat is not the people. There are peoples who have no Proletariat.
Among the peoples who have one and who have been unable to resorb it, it is a painful excrescence and
a cause of fever. It is not the body.
Even in our so-called Capitalist Society, the Capitalist and the Proletarian are not face to face. The
entire authentic people stands between them.
All of those who work with their own capital cannot be called proletarian, since they are owners,
nor capitalists, since they work.
116
The farmer who ploughs his thirty acres of land with the help of his sons; the craftsman who has a
shop and sells what he has made; the doctor, the teacher are in no degree capitalists or proletarian.
Between the officer and the street hawker there are dozens of categories to whom the titles of
capitalist or proletarian cannot be applied without provoking laughter.
There are also more doubtful cases where persons are only partially one or the other. All employers
who work along with their workmen or take a manager or a message boy to help them; all workers who
have a joint interest in the firm; all who receive a salary for their work and rent from their properties.
And all those make up the people properly speaking. Good or bad, they are the legitimate children
of the family.
To reduce them all to the state of wage-earners would be their ruin and their disgrace. It could only
be done by force, on the occasion of disturbances following exhaustion by warfare.
It would be like replacing the living cell of all society, which is the family, by some artificial
institution, questionable even if it were perfect.
It would be like having ones teeth extracted and false teeth fitted; or cutting a leg off and replacing
it with a wooden one to have done once and for all with toothache and corns.
The victory of the Proletariat is not at all, as Marx claims, the necessary achievement of History,
the fulfilment of justice, the end of parasites and oppressors and the liberation of the peoples.
On the contrary, it is the thoroughly premeditated and prepared aggression of a factious group,
numerous or not, often a minority, but strong in envy and rancour, and their conquest of power is
something of an invasion and an occupation by a foreign army.
66.
Dictatorship or Abolition of the State?
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is, say its partisans, an indispensable transitory measure. When
the State, which is the organ of all, has finished snatching their prey from the possessors and has put all
goods at the disposal of all, it will be able to disappear.
Marx was thirsty neither for blood nor for power; one must render him that justice. He did not
dream of founding a new empire, but with all the sincerity of his desire, he sought the happy moment
when man accepts the obvious fact that his best good is the good of all, that by grabbing everything for
himself, he can only ruin the whole order and be crushed under the ruins. For such a simple thing to be
understood, do we have to have that apparatus of coercion and threat called the State?
The Lords and Masters, in their insane pride, believe themselves a different species from the common. But it is not less insane to believe that the common are a different species from theirs.
To do away with wrongdoing, it is not enough to do away with the wrongdoers. One must guard
against those who will take their place and consider what discipline, what purification can make them
better, and what doctrine, wiser.
67.
The Reinforcement of Power and new Division
Should the day come when the whole of the people (every class of the people) is dispossessed and
de-classed by the last class, that of the dispossessed, I repeat that it will have been done by force alone.
And not only by the insurrectional force of one day, but by a regime of force, ever on the watch,
117
ever in alarm, ever ready to put down revolt, seeing that all who have tasted independance mourn it and
that those who have never tasted it are curious.
The more an order violates nature, habit and the norm, the more it needs to use violence.
Now, it is not its lack of character that the Proletariat will impose, for it has no lack of that, but its
abnormal and inhuman character.
The Proletariat will therefore have to arm its chiefs with formidable discriminative power in order
to face all its enemies: those outside, but above all, those within, innumerable, hidden everywhere and
potential in every man.
This power must of necessity turn against those who have entrusted it, so the Proletariat will have
to resume its old habits of submission and abasement. The only right it will have will be to vote, which
it will do with the same submission with which it does everything else.
The split between the governed and their governors will therefore become deeper and wider, which
makes two classes.
But even in the Government, there are two classes, of which the first is the Party, and these will
watch each other jealously.
The governed also form two classes, as we have seen, that of the oppressed and hostile people
waiting for its hour to strike, that of the proletariat submissive because the oppression is inflicted in its
name.
Lastly, there is the mass of the irreductible (such of them as have not already been exterminated)
the millions of deported persons who populate the prisons and camps for re-education and hard labour,
a new Proletariat waiting for its Marx and its Lenin to renew History.
68.
The Fearful Reverse Side of Dispossession
But why do the rare and only persons to benefit by the regime, its heads, not re-establish property
in their favour, since it is such a deep yearning of the human heart?
By what generosity, unexampled in history, in the name of what spirit of sacrifice, in obedience to
what commandment of the materialistic tradition to which they profess so loudly to belong?
Why indeed, unless because they have in their hands something infinitely more satisfying than
simple property (all right for the bourgeois) namely: the possession of human beings and of all they
possess.
69.
Possession and Power
In his Esprit des Lois Montesquieu points out that freedom is threatened, if not lost, as soon as
the three powers that constitute Power fall into the same hands.
The condition of liberty is therefore the separation of executive, legislative and judiciary power.
But Montesquieu does not speak of the fourth power or of the most fearful of all collusions: that
of power and possession. He scarcely mentions it, for the question had never arisen in the West.
Even Roman Emperors and Absolute Monarchs repected the property of their subjects. Better still,
they were its guarantors. They contented themselves with taking a big share of it and of levying tribute
118
on the remainder. Voltaire tells the story of the obstinate miller who refused to give his mill up to
Frederic II for any price at all, and won his case against the King of Prussia.
Power lies in commandment, not in enjoyment.
The Chief of War has power in its pure state: his orders are to be executed, not discussed. By a
look or by lifting a finger he can send a soldier to his death.
But the order he cannot give him is to sign a cheque in his favour. He can demand his life, but not
his purse.
Every time that the King of France emptied his coffers by festivity or by war he had to convene the
Etats Generaux and there had to take advice, listen to remonstrance, yield rights and grant freedom.
And since up to now we have spoken so ill of property and possession, let us render them the
homage, no mean homage of acknowledging that they are the armour of the citizen against the
tyranny of the powerful. It is thanks to them that the coalman is a king in his own home.
But in the states of the Great Turk and those of the Mongol, things were different. The Despot
possessed everything, land, things and people. Beggar and Vizir alike were proletarian in his sight. If
it pleased him to do away with someone and to take his inheritance, he was merely regaining a scrap
of his wealth. If somebody had a house and a garden, had saved up gold and left something to his
descendants, that was because the sovereign in his mercy had shut his eyes to such details and was too
great to stoop and pick up what belonged to him.
The coming to power of the Proletariat is the restoration of the oriental Despot, now wearing a grey
overcoat and cap.
119
120
II.
T HE W HEEL
OF THE
R EVOLUTIONS
121
I.
Power
and
Justice
Love not the world,

neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world,
the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world,
the lust of the flesh,
and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life,
is not of the Father,
123
but is of the world.
I John II, XV.
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1. The Wheel of Revolution and the Revolution of the Wheel

. . . A Fota lu munnu. . .
says the Sicilian ballad.1 Yes, the world is made like a wheel! And Revolution means turn of the
wheel. That is why a revolution brings back what the previous one swept away.
With shouting and bloodshed, amid heaps of severed heads, the frenzied people see Power, decrepit,
decorative and benevolent, overthrown.
Then, after just over a century of disappointment, upheaval, civil and national war, with shouting
and bloodshed, amid new heaps of corpses, the frenzied people see another power set up, this time
reinforced by science and modern technique at their most intrusive, corrosive and virulent.
Before the first Revolution, all the power of Power and a large part of the power of wealth were
in the hands of the nobility. By revolt, the people obtained equality of rights and freedom of action.
Freedom was the way, open for all, to the acquisition of wealth. But the free competition to which all
have an equal right whatever their actual inequality is simply the right of the strongest as Clemenceau
remarks in La Mle sociale (The Social Scrum). My legless friends, he exclaims, try to grow legs!
The beneficiaries of the first democratic operation were therefore the Wealthy and the Wealthy
class.
Freedom plus equality of rights consequently aggravates actual inequality and makes it all the more
intolerable in that it is more tangible.
Proof, say the stubborn, that one cannot stop half-way: now that the political revolution has taken
place, let us have a revolution in economy. Let us level incomes, or rather, let us do away with private
fortunes.
But who will the beneficiaries of this new operation be if not the levellers and the abolishers?
Indeed, how could they remain equals of those they equalize, or abolish themselves after abolishing
other peoples excess even if only to justify their prophets announcement that once the Revolution has
taken place the power of the State will vanish?2
They have all the power in their hands, plus all the power of the wealth of all, to which are added
the infernal powers let loose by science. Thus the people is reduced to worse bondage than that which
twice drove it to revolt.
And so, as we have often observed, Evil springs from Good and the Worst from the Better just as a
jack-in-the-box springs out of the box.
1
2
La Barunissa di Carini (the Baroness of Carini), a masterpiece of Sicilian folklore.

One of Marxs theories.
125
It is difficult to pull up the tares without pulling up the wheat, even difficult not to pull up the wheat
alone and leave the tares, which have stronger roots.
Just as wealth is the justification of work, nobility and honours are the justification of
public office and service.
It is by a sort of abuse that the Noble is rich.
The first revolution deprived him of his office and left him his wealth. Only the abuse
subsisted.
During the Roman epoch and throughout the Middle Ages, the baths were the haunt
of pleasure and debauchery. Our language keeps this in memory since fornication means
what one does under the vault (fornix was the vault of the thermal baths).
Therefore, with all due indignation, the public baths were done away with and for three
centuries, every form of bodily cleanliness was treated with the same reprobation.
But they omitted to do away with prostitution and thenceforward, fornicated without
bathing.
The beneficiaries of this prudish reform were the lice which flourished even in the Kings
wig and the pox that reigned over the whole of the West.
I leave the moral of this story to the reformers.
Marx saw the root of all evil in Lucre and the inequality of riches, just as Voltaire saw the root of
all evil in Superstition, Montesquieu in Despotism and Rousseau in Civilization itself.
And all these views have some truth in them, the limit of each being the truth in the others.
I have heard people attribute all evil to the constraint imposed on sex by morality and the effects of
that constraint on the subconscious; I have heard others attribute it to loose morals; others to overpopulation, others to diet, others to the want of mineral balance in living creatures, others, to a scarcity of
monetary signs, others, to money, others, to the manoeuvring of the free Masons, others, to the occult
power of the Jews, others, to religious tolerance, others, to Catholic dogma. . .
All have excuses for not seeing evil where it is, that is to say, in Sin, for they are not quite sure
what Original Sin is and Original Sin contains more than the utmost their reasoning, experience and
imagination can provide.
***
As to Marxs predictions it is just as easy to be surprised at the quickness with which they have
been realized as to be surprised at the slowness.
With his Dialectics of History, Marx knew he was following the Logic of the World. What he did
not know was that the Logic of the World is that of Sin and that subversion and setbacks are inherent in
it.
Wage-earning, domesticity, imprisonment, specialization, fragmentary and destructive work, the
police, the army, armament, money, the State, religious persecution, dictature of opinion, delation,
rivalry, all these forms of modern slavery, far from disappearing, have become worse and worse with
the new regime.
In Empire, the masters of the new regime have followed in the footsteps of their Imperial predecessors immediately and exactly. They have put into execution the plans of the former to conquer
neighbouring countries, but with greater means, fewer scruples and less heart-searching.
126
They intrigue among themselves in the same way as the former did in order to seize power. In
politics, they follow the prudent advice of Machiavelli to his Prince: that it is better to seem to keep
ones word than to keep it; that one must know how to use cruelty opportunely. . . Indeed, they have
learnt their history lesson with marvellous rapidity.
***
Roman History is a summary of the History of the civilized world, or at least of the Western world.
It acquaints us with our past, and perhaps foreshadows our destiny.
Roman History is that of perpetual revolution and a double conquest.
The conquest of the world by Rome and the invasion of Rome by the vanquished nations and by
freed slaves.
The conquest of power by the Roman plebs.
And the result of the progessive victory of the Revolution of the Proletariat was Empire.
Nero, Tiberius, Caligula, Heliogalabus. . .
2. Definition of Power
Here, to go on with what we were saying, we come up against a new and higher branch of the
Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil: Power.
For it is knowledge that teaches and gives us power. We are given it to enjoy or to undergo. For the
Knowledge-of-Evil, which is fear of every possible loss and hardship shows us that the most fearful
is the loss of life and freedom. Thus it urges us to set up protection and defence which can be efficient
in one mans hands only, or at least in the hands of a few. Meanwhile, the knowledge of Good suggests
to each of those who make up the Great Number the desirability of being that man or of belonging to
those few.
Here in a nutshell is the Tragedy of Power, with all the inherent covetousness and fury which have
shed blood throughout history, and are the whole of History.
It is a natural sequence to go from the chapter of Possession to that of power, for Possession and
Power are almost the same word meaning almost the same thing.
Possession is a direct right over things and consequently an indirect right over human beings.
Power is a direct right over men and an indirect right over things.
3. Power and Knowledge

Knowledge is Power, is how one puts into words the indissoluble link between Knowledge and
Power. Intelligence is of a higher essence than strength, and stronger.
The strength of mankind, compared with that of the world, is straw in a storm, but the miracle of
intelligence is that the thinking straw in the end masters the storm.
To know is to equal says Aristotle. In a certain sense, it is even to surpass. For to know the cause
is to have a hold on the result. To prevent is to cure, to foresee danger is to avoid it, to choose is to go
toward the better, to govern is to turn to our profit what was going to destroy us.
127
Whoever does not understand his purpose can neither act nor work. He is reduced to the play of
his reactions.
But to know is also to ward off the greatest accident and misfortune that can befall man: that
of being isolated. Intelligence creates a bond between the intelligent. Intelligence rallies, assembles,
appeases, attracts, enlightens, leads and unites men, and from their union springs a new power capable
of overcoming all things whether at work or at war.
However, the resemblance between Knowledge and Power lies not only in the effects of Knowledge
but also in Knowledge itself.
Power, as we have said, is the substance of force.3 Now, substance is never perceptible by the
senses, for it is the hidden reserve and resource perceptible only by what underlies in the five senses,
the Nous or the Intellect (that is why Kant calls all substance noumenon).
Any animal whatever knows what force is, and the wild beast respects that of the tamer even when
he does not crack his whip. But only an act of the spirit can discover Power and that act, at its highest
degree, is called Faith.
And faith is true when its object has the mark of Truth, which are to be one, infinite and universal.
Such is the omnipotence of God, the Almighty.
But on the same principle, the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil can be seized only by limited, fragmentary, multiple and confused perception, which attributes Power, that is to say, divinity, to any force
that outdoes that of man in an indeterminate measure, and immediately sets about finding some means
of turning it to advantage.
Whence gods and demons, good and evil powers. But the evil powers can be as good as the good
provided that they are subjected and directed by magical operations, whereas the good, solicited by
religious sacrifice, offerings and rites are not always good, or good for all, since the grace the devout
seek by these means is often that their god should deign to do the utmost harm to their enemies. And
here we have the ordinary outcome of the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil, which is to rush headlong
toward the one in order to fall into the other. And we discover the link between Heathen Religions and
Sin.
4. The Ground Floor of the Heathen Building

The ancients worshipped personifications of the forces of nature say the school-books. What
could be more natural than to see in a storm the wrath of a god, and in a raging sea the runaway horses
of a chariot and its driver bearded with foam and seaweed?
But neither baroque rhetoric nor romantic fantasy can yield the secret of the pontiffs and the augurs.
Nor can Aristophanes or Lucianus, who openly made fun of them, nor Ovid who played poetically
with the fables reveal to us the foundation of Heathen Religion which is the Worship of Powers. They
lie in the most ancient substratum, beyond the scope of imagination or art, from which they are excluded
even by taboo.
Heathen dogma is a one-storeyed building of which the first cannot stand alone, whereas the ground
floor, which constitutes the whole of the religion of many a savage tribe, remains the main one for the
Hindu Brahmans, for example, as for the Chinese. This foundation is the cult of Small Gods, who have
neither a face nor a history: the Manes and Lares.
3
The Four Scourges, III, 24
128
This cult is the most logical consequence of the most logical answer to the most idle question
possible: where has my fathers life gone? Yes, his life, his bodily strength, his breath, my father who
such a little time ago was up and about, doing things, speaking, eating, commanding, and who now
looks like a cold, inert lump or a handful of ash? Where has it gone? Where has my father gone?
The answer is obvious:
His life into the most lively seed of life: fire.
His body into the earth from which all bodies are drawn.
His blood and his fluid into the water that vivifies the earth.
His breath into the air.4
But not into just any fire. Into the fire of his hearth, which as a result becomes sacred fire. It
becomes sacred because the life of the departed has entered it, unless it is already sacred because
inhabited by the souls of the forefathers into whose bosom my father has returned.
Not into just any earth, but into the earth of our field, which, as a result, becomes sacred, forever
inalienable, ours, for the ashes of our fathers are the seeds of possession.
Not into just any water, but into the lustral water that purifies and fertilizes. Not into just any wind,
but into the breath of invocation, incantation, prayer and spells in the sacred language, that of our most
distant forefathers and all the better if it is incomprehensible because of its antiquity (woe unto him
who changes the slightest sound!).
Sacred is what is charged with the spirit of the dead. Usually this transubstantiation takes place
through contact or similarity of form. It can also be brought about by ritual.
Ritual is a struggle and a work of protection against death, for death tears apart and scatters, but
ritual untiringly brings back one of the four elements to the others: it pours the water of liberation onto
the earth, it takes the fruits of the earth, which are earth and water blended and gives them to fire, it
pours blood, which is water and fire mingled, onto the mound and in each of these acts it incorporates
the breath of invocation.
And since we have spoken of blood, let us consider this fifth element which represents the unity
of the four others and consequently the very name of the man, his soul and his self; the Animal, the
Living Creature, plant or animal, but more often than not animal. What animal? The one most like the
dead man, the one that for this reason was his sign. The fifth element is the Totem or Blason the
sacred animal to which sacrifice is made as to the father-god, or the animal designated to be victim of
the sacrifice, as the case may be.
***
Such, in its essence, is the religion of the bearded tribes of the Austrialian bush; such was the
religion of the hairy Germans of Tacitus. But it was also that of Tacitus himself, or Virgil and Horace,
of Plato and Plutarch and of the last great Gnostics of Alexandria. It was the religion I heard, if not
saw, through the screens in the houses where I was a guest in India. It can subsist without evolving and
co-exist unadulterated with the manners and turns of mind of the most advanced times.
In his luminous work La Cit Antique, Fustel de Coulanges shows how deeply rooted the Roman
people were in the religion of the Manes and how it nourished their dignity, their virtues and their
4
And we have the Four Elements or Principles of the Physics of the Ancients, prepared by ritual for observation, explanation and calculation by the philosophers. Man begins with prayer and sacrificial offering; he goes on to speculation, and ends
with measurement and utilitarian domination, degradation, disintegration.
129
greatness.
***
If ritual has the ability to consecrate anything at all, whether an animal, a stick or a stone, and to
charge it with the spirit and the obscure power of the dead, than the conscious instrument of the rite, the
celebrant, is charged all the more with these obscure powers.
As soon as the Eldest Son, initiated by his Father into the words and practices of the ritual
that hidden treasure jealously guarded in the family from age to age takes the place of the defunct
(defunctus = relieved of his priestly functions) at the altar and the hearth (Focus Laris), he becomes the
Father of his brothers and cousins, even of those who are older than he. He is their senior, being the
bearer of what is most ancient: Tradition.
All owe him obedience and bow before him, not because he is superior to them in intelligence,
character or strength, but because through him they commune with their common essence, the Spirit of
their Fathers since the Beginning.
The presence in him of the Spirit of the Fathers contitutes a judgement behind his judgement, a
conscience above his conscience. However strict or strange his decisions may be, they will never seem
arbitrary or questionable, since they emanate (come out of the Manes) since they emanate from
Destiny.
Such is the Patriarch or Patrician, such his authority and his power.
5. Unity and Unequality of the Tribe

The Patriarch is Head of the Tribe5 and the Tribe is the primordial state of human society. The
word comes from Tres (three) and a root related to the Sanskrit Bhu which means Being and Earth. It
signifies the three elements of which a Tribe is composed: the Father, the Mother and their Offspring,
which are not simply persons, as in a Family, but conditions, orders and, as we shall see, the origin of
the classes.
To explain how societies form or justify the rights of man, there is no need to refer as Rousseau
does, to a natural state of perfect independence and equality. Besides, even he is not deceived by the
fiction, since he writes somewhere that It is (this natural state) nowhere to be seen, it no longer exists
on earth and has perhaps never existed.
Nowhere indeed does one see that Man is born free as is stated in the first sentence of The Social
Contract. Everywhere, he is born into a condition of utter dependence, that of the newborn babe on his
parents, a condition which is the model of all natural and legitimate subordination.
There are insects and fish which, no sooner out of the egg, can disperse and take care of themselves,
but of all creatures a baby is the most defenceless, astonished and helpless on the threshold of life.
The Father and Mother have strength and knowledge. Above all, they have love. They give the
infant life and blood, guidance, protection and speech. They teach him manners and skill, they teach
5
Certain ethnologists maintain that the first form of society was matriarchal. It seems that the word is not well chosen, and
others say that no such thing has ever existed. In almost all savage tribes women are excluded from leadership and council
as well as from priesthood. The societies called matriarchal are in fact those in which a man succeeds his mothers brother
instead of his father. Whatever the case may be, there is no society in which men are excluded from public affairs. On the
other hand, even in the most characteristic of Patriarchal regimes, supreme authority may sometimes fall into the hands of a
woman, as happens, for example, in the Kingdom of England.
130
him the gods.
It is not true to say that children are tied to the father only so long as they need him in order
to subsist. As soon as this need ceases, the natural tie is undone.6 This credits man with no more
knowledge or gratitude than a cat. The link that begins with life is, on the contrary, lifelong, by nature,
not by convention. It is the foundation of the Tribe or the natural society, the true state of nature
which has always existed and which will always exist in some form or other.
Here, inequality is original, for it cannot be said of any member of one family that he is the equal
of the others. Neither is the mother the equal of the father, nor the son the equal of his parents, not the
younger of the elder. It is the first set of indelible inequalities.
Neither is the apprentice the equal of his master nor the warrior the equal of his chief, nor the
devout the equal of the priest nor the disciple the equal of the sage. A second set of inequalities which
coincides with the first on such occasion as the Father is at the same time master, priest and sage, which
is customary in a tribe.
But whenever possessions are inherited, it happens that one man becomes prosperous while the
other wastes his inheritance. Then the poor relative takes shelter in the house of the man of fortune and
goes into his service. Then the receiver is no longer the equal of the giver nor the servant of the served.
A third set of inequalities.
But these differences do not destroy union, and obedience does not destroy freedom, nor inequality
justice so long as the family link is piety, respect and loving-kindness which, with all due respect to
Hobbes, is in no way foreign to human nature, human nature which is not that of the wolf.
6. The Tribe and the Scourges

The Knowledge-of-Good-and-evil plays a smaller part in this rudimentary regime than in any other.
The Tribe, as a result, sometimes escapes one or other of the scourges and sometimes escapes all four.
Dire poverty is generally impossible in the patriarchal state for the reason that, normally, possession
is common. In any case, no one is left to fend for himself unless he is excommunicated, for all are coresponsible for each.
Slavery is not unknown as the story of Agar shows Agar whom Sarah put into the bosom of
Abraham. But slavery has every reason to be more human in the tribe than elsewhere, and among
many tribes it is quite excluded, as indeed is every form of domesticity.7 To be sure, service is due to
the Patriarch and no-one may disobey his commandment, but obedience is service rather than servitude,
for they are his own people.
***
The burden weighs especially on women which is one of the reasons for polygamy, welcomed
moreover by the women, who are ready to share the couch provided work is shared too. Of all their
burdens, the heaviest is hospitality which is a characteristic of the patriarchal regime just as xenophobia
is a characteristic of civilized nations.
The verdict of the Patriarch is inexorable. He has the right of life and death over his people, but
they are his, and nobody, unless insane, bruises or mutilates his own flesh.
6
7
Rousseau, The Social Contract

In the Congo, for example.
131
***
The patriarchal Tribe knows nothing of revolution, opposition, division or intrigue. Which explains
its fixity and its perennity. It has no history.
Unlike democratic and civilized nations which are perpetual revolutions, it is a living tradition.
***
In Totem and Taboo, which is strikingly unlike his other works, and above all, strikingly unlike
those of the specialists of primitive mentality, Freud, seeking to explain exogamy and certain attitudes
and customs which denote a horror of incest, postulates a great revolt and a great original crime. Here is
his hypothesis: like the male leader of certain packs of wild beasts, the Father, at the beginning of time,
in his ferocious jealousy, arrogated all rights to himself (that is to say, for Freud, the possession of all the
women of the tribe). His exasperated sons then took his life, but stupor and obscure remorse restrained
them from sharing their prey, and even the memory of their crime, driven into the subconscious of
generation after generation, deposited in it a need for privation, a neuropathic horror of the still-desired
sisters and cousins.
Freuds supposition is an enormity and its basis frail. What is more, there is no need for it.8 In any
case, the assumption it is based on is contradicted by the attitude of the son towards the father and that
of the father towards the women in the most primitive peoples observed. For Parricide, within the
structure of patriarchal life and the religion of the Manes, is a crime that cannot be conceived. It is an
absurdity,9 and so is revolt.
Just as there is no sea without a storm, there has never been a nation without war. But from
the universal tide of war, here and there, some tribes have emerged and succeeded in preserving their
freedom.
Such or very nearly so are the Peuhls of the great plains of central Africa. Surrounded on all
sides by bloodthirsty and predatory nations, they have almost always had the strength and the courage
to remain at peace. They have a horror of bloodshed, even of that of their flocks. They live on milk.
Should an enemy approach, they drive their cows further afield. The Tuaregs, great slave-hunters, take
care not to capture them. It is just as stupid to put chains on a Peuhl as to put a swallow in a cage. The
Peuhl, captured, sits down and dies. They can do nothing with him and there is no point in encumbering
themselves.
There is no greater disgrace for the Peuhls than to be ugly or to have a decayed tooth. Almost
naked, they have a fine and sound sense of ornamentation. They do not build houses and are of no fixed
abode. Sometimes they hold great assemblies and nuptial festivities. Then they dance in a row, their
teeth shining, and the girls choose the most handsome. Parades more worthwhile than military reviews
and work more useful than disembowelling ones neighbour.
***
No, there was no such thing at the origin of the Tribe as the murder of the father of Ancient Days
but something just as astonishing and terrible:
8
Are not the need for new blood and the instinct to preserve the race sufficient to explain these customs? In these small
communities, separated by great distances and great danger from other groups, consanguinity would be constant unless parried
by natural reserve, education, surveyance and religion. Beyond doubt, tribes who did not follow this rule rapidly degenerated
and perished.
9
I mean the crime of the savage, not Freuds hypothesis.
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The sacrifice of the Firstborn.10
Terrible, but great, profound and true.
We find it in the Bible with the sacrifice of Abraham, but also in the religion of every country on
earth.
It is a high mystery of faith which has impressed the conscience and the subconscience of man.
And it is not the invention of a psychiatrist.
***
And since this brings us back to tribal religion, let us complete, at the top and at the bottom, our
brief summary.
First, at the top, for what we have left out is important.
It is the fact that all tribes, even the pagan ones, know God, the God who is none other than God,
He who is behind everything, in everything, above everything, the Great Spirit.
He it is whom the savage invokes in his oaths, reserving Him for the most solemn. It is true that he
does not worship Him, but that is because God is so good.
How can this be? Ask him. He will tell you quite simply, God is so good that there is nothing to
fear from Him.
Not so for spirits, and this is where we must complete the bottom of the picture.
The ground floor of the Building we mentioned has an underground cellar.
Among the dead, some are very unhappy and become wicked. Some are neglected or have inadvertently been offended and irritated. Some have lost all their descendants and are reduced to extremity.
Some are deprived of their last rest by remorse for their crimes or thirst for vengeance. Some of them
can be placated, others have accumulated so much rancour and are so steeped in malice that there is
nothing human left in them: these are the demons. It is necessary to ward off their attack by night, to
foil their tricks, to drive them away and force them back into their dwelling place in hell. That is one of
the normal functions of the priest.
But, with the progress of the times and the automatic development of Science, the Science-ofGood-and-Evil, some nations consider that it is puerile to drive back evil and that it is better to make
good use of it. It is a matter of tapping the formidable infernal powers and putting them into the
service of man. But religious education of the family is not enough for the purpose. Scientists, experts,
technicians are needed. Someone must be hired who has had the best scientific training abroad: a
sorcerer. It is worth our while to give him a good salary, for he will ensure us prosperity, happiness and
peace. Nobody will dare attack us; our neighbours will live in terror. They know we can send them the
death ray. Without even touching them or seeing them, we can at will impregnate them with disease
and make them rot on the spot or burn them little by little or pulverise them at one blast and wipe them
out, body and soul.
Well after all, we are in an advanced century, are we not? 1959.11 We cannot very well go on like
our childish ancestors and contemplate the Good God and implore the kindly spirits, for the Good God
is great, but too much so: he is far away and vague, and the kindly spirits do good, but at their pleasure,
not ours. It is more expedient to force the infernal powers to answer our needs exactly just as if we were
10
11
We shall return to this in the last chapter.

Date of the first edition of this book.
133
answering them ourselves. Besides, high and low are relative. . . What is Good? It is Power! Evil?
Weakness and defeat.
For Realists like ourselves, for modern people, what matters is, etc. etc.
***
The moment has come to point out that the tribe is not necessarily primitive, nor necessarily savage,
nor necessarily heathen.
I say that the moment has come, for this is 1959, which is precisely the year that Abraham, following Tare, his father, went out of Ur, the City of Light where he worshipped the gods of the great city, to
walk the paths trodden by Seth, Enoch and Mathusalem.12
He had seen the city towers and he preferred the tent. He had seen the city crowds and preferred the
horizon. He knew all about the agitation, the refinements, the ratiocination and he preferred the paths
of Seth, Enoch and Mathusalem.
He found the God known of by all since the Beginning but not served, and even abandoned by his
people since they had come to Ur, the God of Seth, Enoch and Mathusalem he found Him under the
open sky.
And Abraham no longer said, like the people of Ur and elsewhere, I worship you, O my fathers
become gods, but said, I worship you, o God of my fathers.
And later, the father of many nations,13 he established the tradition which one race kept alive until
the ripening of the times, until the coming of the One who taught all men to say, Our Father which art
in heaven.
7. A Blessing on the Tribes

Around them, many empires rose and crumbled.
Assur so full of strength,
Babylon, of riches,
Egypt of wisdom, rectitude and grandeur,
Greece and Rome who sowed a widespread crop of columns and statues, laws and ideas.
Yet none of them were blessed by God. And they perished by fire and the sword.
The people chosen by God had neither their virtues nor their genius nor their glory. It was overwhelmed by each in turn. But they are dead, and it is not. Never has it set up a state of any importance
or for any length of time. For two or three thousand years, its territory has been Dispersion.
No people has lamented so often over its ruin, so often pined in chains or suffered so much persecution. Mingled with all nations, it has never melted. It has known every degree of civilization and
taken part in the civilizations of all nations among whom it has dwelt, but it has never ceased to be a
tribe.
12
Archeologists estimate that Abraham left Ur towards the 20th century before Christ (Ur means light.) Ur in Chaldea was
nearing decadence.
13
The meaning of the name Abraham.
134
***
The Church of Rome was persecuted by the Caesars: it has seen their fall and taken their place.
Since then it treats with sovereigns as their equal if not their superior.
Wherever it has taken root, it constitutes a state within the state.
Some emperors, some kings, some republics have upheld it, others have fought it. It has seen them
crumble, all alike, and is still standing.
It is not itself an Empire,
nor a kingdom,
nor a republic.
It is a tribe,
neither primitive,
nor savage,
nor heathen.
***
It is customary to say that religion, and particularly the Christian religion, leaves us free to choose
the regime we like and that the scriptures do not authorise us to support one form of government rather
than another without reading into the texts.
As for the Church, it shows a marked preference for the regime in power however bad it may be
and dislikes all revolution, reform or change, however good it may be.
The fact is that it has seen quite a lot of change. Enough to know what it is worth. Enough to know
the cost.
The only regime to which the scriptures from Genesis to the Gospel repeatedly refer is the
Patriarchal community, but the regimes extolled or decried by politics are strangers to it and therefore
more or less indifferent.
The image of a let us not say perfect, but remaining within the bounds of possibility of a
blessed and welcome society is not in the clouds or in our heads, but near at hand: it is the family.
In what degree is a regime good? In the degree that it resembles a family. What qualities and
particularities must a leader have? What line of behaviour must a leader follow?
King
Emperor
Consul
Ephoros
Arkhon
President
must be like a father.
8. The Limits of the Tribe

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife says Genesis (II, 24).
But he is permitted rather than commanded to do so. The family put into its smallest rabbit-hole each
135
with his own, is the dust of decadence. He shall leave them, then, if he wants to and above all, if he
must; if multiplying on the spot overcrowds the domain, if there is a shortage of pastureland, for which
space is necessary. In such cases, he will seek fortune elsewhere. Otherwise, the tribe will have to
expand, that is to say, conquer new territory. That is why divine Law favours small, widely scattered
groups. They have a greater chance of remaining at peace with their neighbours and united among
themselves.
The proportions to be respected are variable but fairly easy to determine.
There must be enough hands to satisfy fundamental needs.
Each in his place and a place for each.
Each must be able to know all the others and be known by them.
The father must be able to see his whole family at one glance and hold them all together in his
heart.
9. Kingdoms: their Birth and Nature

When it oversteps these limits, the tribe becomes a People, a Nation, a Kingdom.
If we are to call a Kingdom a natural group, we must at least admit that it is a forced natural
group. In fact, the Kingdom is founded on force since it cannot be founded on love, seeing that one
cannot love too many people or people one does not know.
The need for defence and at the same time, rapine, is what has kept the members of the tribe
together and prevented them from dispersing. It is the determination of a shrewd, capable and strongly
attractive patriarch, his determination to lose nothing of what has issued from him but to increase his
life by all the lives he has engendered.
To be oneself and at the same time more than oneself is exalting! For my son is someone else but at
the same time, myself, and all these sons, with their sons, is myself multiplied! And I love all these sons
like myself, I mean as if they were myself. But is it them I love in them, or myself my strength,
my importance, my weapons, my increased means?
As soon as a tribe becomes strong, it finds itself able to drive the other tribes before it and to capture
or destroy them. Then the best thing the yet unconquered tribes can do is to yield without combat, while
the best thing the powerful tribe can do is to incorporate them and increase its strength accordingly.
That is how Kingdoms, properly speaking, are founded.
A kingdom is a perpetual alliance of tribes in subordination.
10.
The Holy Clusters of Power
Far from losing their constitution, the tribes thus combined are ensured of keeping their possessions
and their dignities while homage and an oath bind them to the king. Their chiefs are given the titles of
cadets (younger brothers) cousins or second cousins in the Royal tribe,14 a legal link which will soon
become a real one through marriage.
14
There was no other way of signifying rank. Whence the custom for Kings to call any great lord, related or not, my
cousin?
136
The Kingdom thus becomes a cluster of dominions attached to the sceptre by an oath which is a
substitute for the blood tie or its corroboration.
The oath is a religious link, for the gods are its witnesses and confer on it its value.
That is why the scale of powers is called a Hierarchy or the power-of-that-which-is-holy.
11.
The Hand of Power
Sovereignty is not, contrary to what everyone from Aristotle to Montesquieu says, composed of
Three Powers, but is in fact composed of five, just as there are five fingers on a hand.
The first and most important to remember is Sacerdotal Power.
The second is Executive (and military) Power.
The third, Legislative Power.
The fourth, Legal Power.
The fifth and last, but not least, is Landed (and Financial) Power.
Indeed, the King is the virtual possessor of the land of the country, for, whether he is King of France,
of Golconda or of Thule, his name is its name, and when money comes on the scene to represent all
riches, every coin will bear his effigy to signify that he is the possessor, if not of all things, at least of
the Right of Possession.
When the five fingers of power are on one mans hand, Monarchy is Absolute and Primitive.
***
Any father who knows his duty sacrifices to the gods of the hearth or celebrates common prayer,15
commands, teaches the rule of the house, corrects and punishes, possesses in name and title all the
family goods and provides for its expenses. Thus he unites the five powers.
If not, the family is a many-headed monster, or a headless one.
A man who knows how to govern himself also knows how to govern the few other people who are
his and does so without noticing, even when his responsibilities increase. But when natural capacity is
exhausted, knowledge has to take over and invent resemblances, compensations, artifices and penalties.
With the King comes the Law. The family used to live according to it but without knowing it. Now,
throughout the kingdom it is known, but immediately, people find ways of not following it and of
by-passing or over-ruling it.
12.
The Illusions of Power
For the almost divine plenitude of sovereignty which a mere father of family enjoys has never been
exercised by any King over his kingdom. No human arm has ever been strong enough to support the
five-fingered hand of Power.
The bigger a mans house, the smaller the proportion he can occupy. Thus the Absolute Monarch
is less able than anyone else to occupy his own power.
15
According to whether he is pagan or Christian, Israelite or Moslem.
137
The Autocrat (he-who-can-by-himself) is precisely the man who can do nothing except through the
medium of a great many others. None of his orders can be executed, nor even conceived without the
help of a multitude of ministers, counsellors, officers and civil servants, the majority of whom he does
not know and who act out of his sight or reach.
Unless it is their good pleasure to comply with them, the Kings commands are postponed, diverted
and ignored.
***
The pyramid has been given the name of the Pharaoh Kheops, but he neither planned nor built it
and he is in it only as a mummy.
In all his great works, the King is only represented. Consequently, wherever he presents himself,
he merely carries his representation there and disappears under the cloak of his array.
Then everything around him becomes a game of the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil, or of the Trueand-the-False: all is fiction, vanity, mouthing and play-acting.
Not without reason does he speak of himself in the plural, for he can no longer speak in the name
of that unique thing that the least of human beings calls I.
Nothing takes place more naturally and almost imperceptibly than the effacement of the powerful
by his power.
To reach the stage when the King reigns but does not govern there is no need to wait for the great
inventions of the nineteenth century such as constitutional monarchs. That was just what the sluggard
kings were on their palanquins, and they were certainly not the first of their kind.
How many capital decisions have been taken in the name of children in their swaddling clothes,
and how many more in the name of besotted, mindless or completely indifferent princes.
When Charles XII of Sweden was warring in Poland and his ministers complained of his absence,
he answered them that he would send them one of his boots to preside at their councils a soldierly
joke, but a good hard kick at an edifice of lies.
When one takes a look at the acts of the most famous despots, one discovers that they were masters
of their impulses only and that these caused more talk than change God be praised in the laws of
the country and the lives of its people.
The King, Right, the Straight Line and the Ray
LU
LE
REX
PA
13.
REX
LUX
138
LEX
PAX
I remember seeing this cross and its inscription on the door of Saint-Etienne in Caen. It is the only
carving; all the beauty of the basilica lies in its bare walls and the straightness and the height of its
spires.16
But the sobre ornament has its grandeur and its significance. All the significance of the word King.
Rex evokes Rectitude, the straight line traced by the ray.
The radiation of Light: Lux.
The light that illuminates, directs, corrects and relates: Lex the law.
And wherever Right reigns and radiates, each thing takes its place in peace. Pax.
And all are in the Cross Crux. . .
14.
The Magic of Power

In the day that ye eat thereof . . . ye shall be as gods!
As gods. All the fraud of the promise is in this as and in the plural.
The Science-of-Good-and-Evil teaches that the supreme fruit is power, since it contains and bestows all the others.
The Hindus call it the cow that fulfills all desires.
For if you are a king, you can say to one Do this and to another Do that and it is done. You
can say to the beautiful girl Come and let me take you and you have her, and you have only to point
at the man you dislike and he is a dead man.
You can order scrub to be turned into a garden17 and marshland into a great city.18 It is just as in
dreams or in fairy stories.
Once upon a time there was a king. . . and as soon as there is a king, his sceptre is a magic wand.
Magic and Majesty are the same word19 and even the most incredulous cannot accuse that magic of
trickery, for that trickery is what we call history.
And history is the fable no-one could invent.
15.
Of Kings and Gods

Thus Mythology and Royalty are born together.
Mythology is the history of the Beginnings of the Kingdoms of nature and of the Fathers of Nations,
beginnings intermingled in the mists of time.
Kings and gods engender each other. The kings claim to descend from the gods through the medium
16
I have since learnt that it was copied from a cross on a very ancient church.
Versailles.
18
St. Peterburg.
19
The one is derived through Persian, the other through latin, from the root Mag or Mah which means Great.
17
139
of some hero Hercules or Theseus but they might more accurately boast of being their fathers, for
it is they who bring them into being at a word.
Indeed, if the Law of Death, as we have seen, is that like rejoins like, nothing less than a great
chief, a powerful king can fill the sky, the sun or the sea with his soul instead of entering the animal of
his totem like a mere father of family.20
No, the gods are not simply deified men, as the extremists make out, and also the Hindus from
the Aitinashika. The names of the gods and their attributes designate them in all languages as natural
powers.
And the natural power is there, before it becomes a god, just as the animal is there, a living creature,
before it becomes a totem.
It is there in the human shape that man spontaneously imagines for it when he names it as poets
have always done and always will do.
But no poet worships the allegory he has invented and no craftsman implores the grace of the object
he himself has made.
Sacred, as we have seen, is what bears the spirit of the dead. What is true of fire, water, an animal
or a landmark is true of the figures of this world: the souls of Ancestors make them gods by entering
them. Therefore it is the dead who give immortals their holiness and gods their divinity.
But the gods are like the river or the fountain whose water incessantly changes without there being
any change. Even Indra, who, says the Vedas, can be supplanted by anyone who raises himself to his
rank by great deeds, sacrifice or austerity even Indra will clothe his supplanter with his eye-studded
body, arm him with his bow and give him the name of Indra. . .
As the spirit of the Father will blend with the fire of the Lares and in the fire with the spirit of his
Fathers, the Pontiff-King, great by his rank (unlike the Hero who is great by his genius and his own
virtues) vanishes into divine light.21
Here the first storey of the pagan building rises, halfway between heaven and earth, more brillant
than the ground floor, more dazzling, more confused, more intelligent and not so weighty, broader and
more outward, more artificial and artful, more seductive and misleading, more decidedly heathen.
16.
Of Science and Sin in Myth and Science
Thus between the god and the pontiff, in death, there is communication of substance and resorption of distinct signs and forms. In life, on the contrary, there is communication of signs and mutual
understanding.
The Pontiff-King evokes his gods, but he listens to their answers, waits for an omen and interprets
the augurs.
For this, profound and precise occult knowledge is needed. In the Germanic language, Knig,
King, means He-who-knows from kennen.
20
In another way, the King is a family father and, like the Patriarchs his fathers, inseparable from his totem, which explains
the presence of an animal at the side of each god, or below or inside: link from the religion of manes to the religion of gods,
from the first floor of the pagan building to the upper floor.
21
The heroes, halfway towards divinity, are at least lucky enough to preserve their figures, their lives and their persons.
The case of Rama and Krishna is specifically different from that of Hercules. They are heroes, not by procreation but by
Incarnation, a notion foreign to classic Antiquity.
140
And the first step in the exact science called Divination is to establish Temples or Spatial Divisions
of the Earth and Sky, co-ordinated axes which determine the direction of the signs. And here are the
foundation of Geometry and Architecture: they lie in Contemplation or reflection on our destiny linked
with the structure of the world and dependent on the Will of Heaven.
Times must also be fixed and distributed: those of the seasonal feasts, of sacrifice and thanksgiving.
Auspicious and disastrous days must be determined. The aspects of the hour govern seedtime and harvest, abundance or dearth, hunting, war, favourable winds, foundations, building and every undertaking.
Now, to put the twelve moons into the space of the year and twelve hours into unequal days and
nights is to enter celestial clockwork and the observation and calculation of Astronomy. The beginning
of this science is Consideration or sidereal consultation22 (see how much better it is, on subjects like
this, to let the primitive knowledge deposited in words speak for itself.)
But one cannot presage without observing, nor observe without noting the necessary connections
between successive phenomena. And the fruit of these experiments, inferences and hypotheses is transcribed in the equations, cyphers and formulae of Mythology or Natural History.
In the scientific language of those Physics, our term cause is translated into the term Father and
Effect becomes Son. System and Theory are called Family and Kinship. To follow the thread of causal
relation one must therefore resort to the genealogy of the gods. This makes the gods and goddesses
couple in ways as strange as they are necessary. It is a mistake to impute their behaviour to the licentious
imagination of poets: it is due to logic alone and the impassive objectivity of the priestly observers.
***
If we could discover the first form of the myths, we should probably find their explanation of the
world more neatly linked. To take an example at random: Venus born of the foam of the sea is a
proposition of which Genetics and Embroyology have not yet exhausted the implications.
But the ebb and tide of raid and conquest have swept over the sanctuaries. The grateful conquerors
have set up their gods in place of the vanquished ones and adorned them with the spoil and the jewels
plundered from foreign fable. Glory and riches, as happens, have covered over the sense.
***
But the whole of pagan religion is an invasion, for Heaven and Earth were occupied before the
coming of the gods.
Occupied by the only God men have never imagined, the true God.
In his simple language, the savage calls Him the Great Spirit.
He is the Most High, whom Melchisedek, King of Justice and Peace, served. He blessed Abraham
the Patriarch because he worshipped Him alone, unlike the Kings of Ur and Sodom.
The God who has no face and who cannot have one, being limitless. It is forbidden to make any
image of Him, for that would be to falsify and belittle Him. He is the God the Nations and Kings would
have nothing to do with, for to take Him for God is to be taken.
Nobody can possess Him, since He is Everybodys God.
To have Him is to have Him for master and judge, and to serve Him.
22
sidera = stars.
141
The Nations and Kings have wanted to possess their gods in order to make use of them, to be
protected, favoured and justified by them.
And led by their gods, the Nations and Kings have filled the world with their glorious deeds, of
which the most glorious are the burning of cities, and massacre. Nation has clashed against nation and
the gods have have warred against one another.
Thus the brilliant image of the gods, which should be the harmony of the spheres, has, on the
contrary, brought about tumult in the houses of the heavens.
Instead of constant examples of the highest virtue, it exhibits in full light and a thousandfold,
turpitude and enormity.
***
The gods are not powers radiating from the All Powerful. Their figures are not reflections of His
light; they are not various and partcular aspects of the One God, and Mythology is in no degree a
Theology.
No, the gods are figures of the passing world. The gods do not come from God, but from men and
the world.
The man who raises himself up towards the gods does not approach the Most High but goes astray
halfway up in emptiness.
Through the medium of the gods, Nations and Kings have sought, not the knowledge of God, but
knowledge of the world, and in knowledge of the world, not truth about the world, but domination over
others.
In the mental speculation from which the gods proceed and in their cult, in the motives attributed
to their acts, and in particular, their loves, what is striking is the total absence of love and charity.
The object of their search is always the Profit of Power, the Fruit.
The punishment of sin: error. says Pascal.
***
Although mythology throws light on some causal series, fairly soon, the chain breaks.
Each cycle of fables contains some length of chain but the broken pieces cannot be linked. The
first link, like the last, always hangs in the void.
Besides, there are two weaknesses in the system, one in the Principle and the beginning, the other
in the End.
For at the beginning, one finds Chaos, which is not a Principle, and at the End, above all, Fatality,
against which the Father-of-the-Gods-and-Men himself is helpless, and which is not completion.
***
It is not surprising to find the same limits and the same blind spots in the vision of the world
to which modern science gives rise. For modern science is a daughter of the Renaissance, so named
because of the re-birth of the pagan gods, which implies that the true God is forgotten or denied, that
truth is sought where she is not, that is to say, outside Him, and that there is a furious renewal of the
142
need to dominate the world and get the most enjoyment possible out of it, seeing that no other good is
conceived.
A world dependent on its Creator and ordained for Salvation had suddenly become incomprehensible. It had to be replaced by the complicated explanations and the summary denials of which modern
science is made. The two weaknesses of Mythology are immediately apparent in it: Chaos and Fatality.
The Chaos of modern science is called Matter, and future centuries will be amused by the childish
credulity with which not only ordinary people but also the most serious doctors explain how matter in
time gave birth to Life and Spirit, which is very similar to Ge, the earth, giving birth to Uranus, the
sky.23
Fatality in modern terms is Necessity and Universal Determination, which shuts out freedom, hope,
miracle, merit, grace and inner life, notions which are inaccessible to the heathen mentality of the West.
And this of course shuts out love and charity and likewise since there is no stopping progress all
poetry.
The broken pieces of causal chain to which each science on its own diligently adds links without
ever grasping the final one, do not fit each other any better than those of the cycle of fable. Indeed, they
are further apart.
Astronomy, Psychology and Medicine were precisely related for the Chaldeans. Not for us.
So were Mathematics and Music for the Greeks. Not for us.
Chemistry and Ascetic meditation were linked for the Masters of the Great Art. Not for us.
Science and Wisdom are the same word for the Hindus. For us they no longer have any relationship.
Finally, Religion and Science fused in Myth. But our Science is an atheistic mythology.
What does it matter: the power of its Bomb is enough for it and solves all problems.
Solvet in favilla.
The wages of sin is death, says St. Paul.
17.
Of Royal Priesthood
The plenitude of royal priesthood for the pagan is to be the god himself.
Pharaoh held his office and every morning celebrated his own worship.
The Emperor of China was the Son of Heaven and according to whether he turned right or bowed
left, the sun shone or it rained in the provinces.
Manco-Capac and his wife Mamma Ocella announced themselves as children of the Sun and the
Moon.
The nailparings of the Mikado were enshrined in precious caskets and his dejections, piously taken
up, were given pompous funerals.
From Nabuchadnezzar to Tiberius, innumerable kings found themselves worshipped alive.
23
Belief in miracles and wonders is based on facts which are thought to have been observed and their cause is attributed
to the Power of God or of a magician. But the spontaneous generation of Life from Matter and of Reason from the Animal,
claimed to be a scientific fact, would be nothing less than a miracle no-one has witnessed and to which Science attributes no
cause.
143
To be like a god is to achieve the supreme freedom of omnipotence: to be able to do anything
one likes. But it can happen that the man become god is no longer able to want anything.
Imprisoned in the harassing obligations of perpetual ceremonial, in the circle of his courtiers and
the college of his priests, with the help of his harem and his eunuchs he can no longer desire anything,
clad as he is in the all-powerlessness of the idol.
And here we are: the Fruit eaten.
18.
The Rejection of Priesthood and the ensuing progress
But the majority of historic dynasties have escaped this extremity by following logic and the path
of progress.
Neither love of God nor thirst for knowledge being the prime purpose of the Priesthood of Kings,
logic required that they should put these charges on to other shoulders in order to strengthen their power,
since that was the true object.
This resulted in great progress, for Priesthood needs a special vocation and takes up the whole of a
mans life, and Learning requires exceptional gifts and also takes up the whole of life.
As soon as men devotes themselves entirely to the latter, the number of their disciples quickly
grows. Philosophy, as it develops, breaks away from the Clergy who have broken away from Royalty.
The Sciences then break away from Philosophy and develop, after which the Specialists break away
from the Specialists. Each burrows into a smaller and more precise hole. And the bigger the system
becomes, the smaller the men.
The system is so big that it is unthinkable that one man can contain it. And the work of the mind
becomes the nibbling of an insect and the production of dust.
The fruit eaten.
19.
The Two Swords
As soon as Kings give up Priesthood, the divorce begins between Spiritual and temporal Power and
the struggle leads to difficult and questionable arrangements.
On the one hand, a clergy without arms or legal power (or, if it has any, like the Papacy of old, with
too much of both, since they are incompatible with its state and inadequate to uphold its pretensions)
a clergy doing its utmost to subjugate the Powerful and cast its spell over the nations.
On the other hand, sovereigns who, the more ignorant and impious they are, the more they act and
judge as if they alone were omniscient, and who accept neither criticism nor control nor any limit but
are masters of the life and death and conscience of their subjects.
In the Holy Roman Empire of the Occident, it comes about that a Sovereignty springs from the
Priesthood itself, thanks to, and against, the Empire and that is the Sovereignty of the Pope.
Pope and Emperor depend on each other, the Emperor by the Consecration which has made him
emperor and which the Pope claims to have to annul by excommunication. (This frees all vassals from
their oath and strikes at the roots of power.) The Pope depends on the Emperor for his States and above
all for the ecclesiastic and monastic domains in all the states of the Empire, which are constantly in
danger of being taken back or plundered.
144
Two kingdoms without frontiers perpetually trespassing on each other. Blessings and curses alternate and the nations are involved in bloody dispute until temporal power is ruined spiritually and
spiritual power temporally.
In the Holy Empire of the Orient, the Basileus is wise enough to side with the Patriarch of Constantinople who contents himself with remaining the highest dignitary of the Crown, and the two get on
with each other well enough to uphold the hieractic, gilded stage for ten centuries.
The Emperors of Holy Russia, although not priests, were the heads of Religion. This was likewise
the case of the Kings of England, and still is.
The first Capetians were called Counts and Abbots. As Kings, they were anointed with the holy
oil of St. Remy and immediately proceeded to heal miraculously. Most Christian Kings, they protected
the Church and were protected by her.24
The Most Catholic Kings of Spain did as much, and more and more than enough.
As soon as the expression, King by the Grace of God is no longer an article of faith for the
people, Royalty is dead.
This being so, the secret of Joan of Arc is perhaps not an impenetrable historic riddle I refer
to the sign she gave the hesitating Charles VII when alone with him in his Cabinet in the Chateau at
Chinon. Questioned at her trial about this sign, she answered in an allegoric manner. It is probable that
her meaning was this:
The Dauphin had strong and not unfounded doubts as to whether he was the legitimate
son of his predecessor and he could not overcome the scruples of his devout conscience.
I come to tell you from God that these thoughts come not from Him but from the Devil.
For it is a proposition of the Devil that Kings are kings in their own quality and by flesh
and blood.
God can make a king of a shepherd if it so please Him. Did He not take David from
behind his flock? and was David less than a king, of whom the King of Kings, our sweet
master was one day to be born?
In the name of God, I shall show you both the sign and the thing, for my sign will be to
lead you to Reims for your consecration.
The oil of the Holy Phial and the unction of David is a sign no Christian can deny.
20.
Consecration and its Consequences

Consecration is what remains to Kings of their Priesthood.
Like Priesthood, Consecration signifies that the man has been put apart for the service of God,
like a chosen arrow, reserved for the unique service of representing God among men, of bridging the
gulf that separates Him from them, of communicating commands from above, but especially the Eternal
Order that reigns in the heavens.
How the Science-of-Good-and-Evil is going to speculate on this admirable them is only too obvious. Speculation means Play of a Mirror and the game consists in ceaselessly turning the mirror from
24
Even though there was no lack of conflict from the time of Philippe le Bel to that of Louis XIV.
145
right to left, from left to right, from good to evil and so catching the lark.
Turned to the left, the mirror says I am like God: everyone serves me and I serve no-one. There is
a great gulf between me and other men. God in His justice has chosen me by consecration and therefore
decrees beforehand that everything I order will be just.
Barbarous times (and armies at war) know no other law than the will of the Chief. It would therefore
be impossible to suggest that the Chief wanted something unjust; it would be a contradiction in terms.
Kings must be obeyed like Justice itself explained the most famous of preachers at the court.25
And to give the commandment a reasonable twist, he added otherwise there would be no end to affairs.
Then, so as thoroughly to indoctrinate his flock with heathen orthodoxy, They are gods partaking in
some measure in divine independence. And to cover it all with the seal of the Bible, I have said: Ye
are all gods and sons of the Most High.26
Consecration, much less than priesthood, does not tend to mark a mans character. Priesthood requires preparation, education, initiation, daily discipline in inner and outer things, collegial supervision;
and behaviour, or at least bearing that is both impeccable and strict.
Consecration is looked upon as a public demonstration rather than as a sacrament. Its purpose is
the enchantment of the crowd rather than the inner transformation of the Crowned.
Consecration once acquired does not oblige the Prince to be just, but forbids the Subject to judge.
The master of the Law can deal freely with the Law. He will always have enough flatterers to reproach
him with being too kind.
Seeing that nothing is more formidable than his strength and his rigour, the prudent will take
care to cultivate his weaknesses. It is in the public interest to mollify his bloodthirsty instincts in
voluptuousness and to dissipate his fits of fury in pleasure.
Seeing that, in war, the others receive the blows and he the glory, he devotes himself readily to that
noble pastime.
Seeing that he has the right of life and death over everyone, and that God alone gives life, he is left
with the privilege of giving death.
Assailed by all kinds of excitement, blown about by all kinds of vanity, pressed by every temptation,
all barriers removed, how can the man who has been made a god not become a demon?
So long as his mother, the Great Catherine, kept him away from Royal affairs unduly, the Tsarevitch
Paul was known for his good qualities and fine feelings. At last his hour came, and on the throne
mounted such a fiend that he had to be struck down.
When Louis XV as a child deserved to have his bottom smacked, a servant child was fetched
and whipped before his eyes. Whose fault was it if the intelligent boy learnt this lesson: that the
consequences of his bad deeds would always be borne by others and that this was proper? The scandals
of his reign and the famous conclusion he came to (Aprs moi le dCluge)
were no doubt partly due to
the displaced punishment.
There was no lack of unction for Peter the Cruel or for Ivan the Terrible or for Richard III (who
was even crowned and consecrated twice).
Since legitimacy belonged to their power, they were able to dispense with it in their acts.
25
26
Bossuet.
The prophet was speaking not to a king, but to all people.
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21.
Kingdom and War
The Kingdom is a group formed by force and founded on violence. Without war it would have
remained in the tribal state. It is therefore made by war for the sake of war.
As soon as the King abandons priesthood, the War Chief in him becomes foremost. In war, government by one man is the only one possible. The imminence of danger at every moment, the decisive
advantage of lightning rapidity render disastrous all discussion, all reflection, all hesitation in execution
and therefore all freedom and all conscience in the executors.
War is therefore the substance of Monarchy, from which certain frivolous minds draw the conclusion that the substance of Democracy is peace, but we have already shown that history has again and
again made a bloody denial of this illusion.
Not Royalty alone, but all forms of power are attached to war, all except spiritual power.
Therefore Kings have too often treated their own kingdoms, their great vassals and humble people
alike, as if they were conquered countries.
Nowhere are they surer of their sway than in countries run like an entrenched camp.
More than one has had recourse to the expedient of provoking war to rein in a people that has let itself go in luxury and vice and is beginning to agitate for rights and indulge in mockery and philosophies.
In peril and suffering, in mourning and hardship, unconditional fidelity and blind obedience become a
reflex of the instinct of collective self-preservation.
***
It is in the regime of Princes that war breaks out for the most capricious reasons. Here more
than ever the theoricians of economic-necessity-as-the-cause-of-war must set their imagination to work
to explain the facts by reasonable reasons. It is quite possible that the rich provinces of a spineless
neighbour weakened by self-indulgence or discord may tempt the covetousness of a shrewd monarch
and he will not fail to put forward the most chivalrous reasons for his economical brigandage.
But there is something more insatiable than greed, and that is vanity, the need to equal ancestral
glory, swollen by fable and stuffed into our heads since we were children, the need for entertainment
when festivities and women no longer suffice, the need to reply to the insolent or jocular remark someone, they say, made, or might have made. . .
The most futile motive is often the true one for the most serious events.
To rid himself of the ambitious Louis the Dauphin, Charles, his father, prudently gave him the
command of the Great Companies. To rid himself of his fleecers whose presence was a calamity for
the provinces in which they quartered, the Dauphin led them under the walls of Berne, which he took,
not half so pleased with this capture as with his valiant enemies and the losses they had inflicted on his
army. An economic reason if you like.
Many are the Kings who have had engraved on their monuments the long list of their victories
illustrated by pictures of prisoners with their hands chopped off or their eyes stabbed.
But rare but unique the Egyptian epitaph:
During all my reign
I let the bows moulder in my arsenals.
Not a child was ill-treated
Throughout my kingdom.
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22.
The Superstition of Blood and the ensuing crimes
As faith in the virtues of consecration weakens among Kings and Nations, the superstitious attachment to blood increases.
Royal Blood is credited with mystic and even natural virtues to the extent that it is seen to be of
another colour, red being vulgar and all right for a roast.
Blue Blood becomes a mythological fantasy and a talisman that opens the door to all rights and all
honours.
But by a twist of serpentine logic, it is this blood superstition that breeds parricide, incest and other
crimes against blood unheard of in nature and rare among ordinary people, but seemingly a sombre
privilege of royal dignity.
Indeed, if Blood gives the right to power, the holder of power can have no worse rival than his
next-of-kin by blood; and the right of life and death over all, which the powerful arrogate to themselves,
finally turns against their own blood.
Saturnus with his sickle mutilated and killed his father Uranus, who had devoured his other children.
Saturnus also devoured his own children until one of them who had escaped, Jupiter, vanquished
him with a thunderbolt and shut him up in an infernal abode.
And these were the first gods, in whose image the first kings figured.
No doubt the murders of the gods are like their loves: innocent, like the terrible play of Nature who
destroys at will what she has produced.
But the games of those who take themselves for gods, and set themselves up as much their
games with life and death are devoid of innocence and unnatural. Even wild beasts love their little
ones and respect their equals.
Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, unknown to him, it is true. Royal Fatality. Born of
this outrageous union are two sons who kill each other outside Thebes, and a daughter who kills herself.
Atreus at a banquet presents his brother Thyestes with the flesh of his adulterous children, then
kills him after the ghastly feast. Egisthes the son of Thyestes kills Atreus.
Orestes kills his mother Clytemnestres who had killed his father Agamennon and reigns surrounded
by Furies.
Tullia, the daughter of King Servius Tullius, drives her chariot over the body of her father who has
been stabbed by Tarquin her superb husband whom she has come to greet as king.
Theodora, the Empress, adorned like Theotokos of the Ikons, received the visit of a young man of
great beauty in whom she recognized her own son. She had had him by an officer from Lydia when
she was a bearkeeper in the underground dens of the Circus. The tears ran down her make-up-stiffened
cheeks, for he reminded her of the man she had loved most. She looked at her son, mourning for him
beforehand, then bade him leave. He was never seen again.
In the mists of the north, in the haunted castle, Fengo27 kills King Horwendill his brother, marries
the widow and reigns in his brothers stead. Prince Hamlet, son of Horwendill, kills the king and dies,
and his mother with him.
Clovis, the baptised, anointed with the oil of the Holy Phial, by cunning or by the sword puts to
27
Skakespeare gave him the name of Claudius. The story or legend takes place in the second century B.C. in Jutland.
148
death all of the little Frankish kings, most of whom are his kin.
Clotaire and Childebert, sons of saint Clotilde, summon the orphans of their brother Clodomir and
in spite of the childrens entreaties, seize them by the arm and stab them in the side. The brothers in
crime share the clothing of their dead victims and shortly afterwards, fight each other in a merciless
war.
Good King Dagobert, the one in the song, has his uncle Brodulfe put to death, then his nephew
Chilperic so that he can reign in peace at last.
Pedro of Castille had his brother Don Frederic and his cousin Don Juan murdered before his eyes,
had his Aunt Leonora put to death, had Lara poisoned and lastly poisoned Queen Blanche in her prison.
Pedro of Castille, and Henri de Transtamare, two brothers. They meet and embrace each other. One
is red with anger, the other livid with rage, each has a dagger. The one who gets on his feet again will
have won his right to the crown. A prisoner in the Tower of London, Richard II was murdered by order
of his cousin Henry. In the same Tower, the children of the late Edward were put under the blanket by
the good offices of Richard III, their uncle and protector.
At the city gate, the Duke of Orleans was felled by the thugs of his relative Jean-sans-Peur. Twelve
years later, on the bridge, Jean-sans-Peur was felled by his relative the Dauphin de France.
Guise le BalafrC 28 fell stabbed by thirty blades in the appartments of his cousin Henry who waited
behind the curtain till he had finished expiring.
Ivan of Russia strikes his son with his iron ringed stick and kills him. Peter the Great forces his son
to attend the torture of his friends, then hands him over to the torturer.
In Bysantium, it was done to stab the eyes of a fallen sovereign, or to emasculate him. In Abyssinia,
the cousin, pretender to the throne, was wrapped round with bandages of honey-scented wax and slowly
burned.
With his Long Hand Ataxerxes struck down all the sons he had had from all of his wives.
In the Islamic Dynasty of India, the end of each reign was marked by war between the princes. The
winner prudently had all his brothers (numerous in the regime of harems) strangled, as well as all their
descendants. This was also the fashion for the Great Turk and the Sultans of Morocco.
In China, the dynasty of the Tsin in a monotonous series of the murders of kinsmen. A cobbler
become a general puts an end to the dynasty and seizes the throne of Nankin.
The third of his line is murdered by one of his sons, who is put to death by his brother, who
immediately massacres almost all the blood princes.
His successor is sixteen years old and reigns for six months, just long enough to strike down
everybody around him.
In his turn, he is murdered by his uncle known as the Hog who has his nephews and neices put to
death.
The Hog leaves the throne of the Sons-of-Heaven to the son of his minion. The child emperor, who
reigns from the age of ten to that of fifteen takes the chance to play at breaking so many human lives
that his family find themselves obliged, under cover of a night of debauchery, to cut off his head.
A new dynasty then begins: that of the Tsi. Although each of the princes takes care to get rid of
all his cousins, he always forgets one, who ends up by getting rid of him.
28
Scarface.
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The first Hebrew King to appear in the Bible is Abimelek who distinguishes himself by having the
seventy sons of his father slaughtered on the same stone. Whereupon the people of Sichem acclaim him
King.
David, the holy King and Prophet, wars against his son Absolom, unwillingly it is true, and his
soldiers kill Absolom hanging by the hair in a sycomore tree, against his orders, it is true, and David
laments for him. Royal fatality.
***
Another crime against blood is Incest, held in abomination by all nations however barbarous or
depraved they may be another reverse of the logic of Blood.
But if the blood of the Pharaoh or that of the Inca is divine and of a solar species, how could it
mingle with impure, foreign, human blood except through grave and evil-bringing inconsequence?
So he is forced to force nature and marry his sister. Thus the race degenerates and exhausts itself. Out of twenty-five Egyptian dynasties, how many have lasted more than a century, or even half a
century?
Consanguine union, which is barely attenuated incest, is the rule in all royal traditions. In the
diminished circle of possible union, the same blood turns and stagnates.
That the Prince may never, for the honour of his race, marry the women his heart and nature need
is another insult to race.
The shame of occasional adultery, scandalous or carefully hidden, is perhaps the only remedy and
salvation for royalty.
23.
Royal Alliances and War
The kings daughter whom a kings son marries in countries where formal incest is not accepted
can only be the daughter of a foreign king, which makes the Royal Family more and more foreign to
the nation over which it reigns.29
Saint Louis, Henry IV of France, Louis XIV are looked upon by the French as incarnations of their
national glory. How many drops of French blood did they have in their veins?
But the civilized are too reasonable a species and too found of utility to take a royal marriage for a
pure sacrifice to the blood superstition. And since romantic reasons would not stand up to ridicule, one
must needs put forward reasons of State.
What a pleasure it is for diplomats to devise this alliance with another nation under the sign of
marriage better still, this festive reconciliation with a hereditary enemy! How right you are, good
people, to dance at this glorious and romantic ending to war!
But can each generation possibly be fooled in the same way?
It is yet another reverse of the logic of Blood that this alliance engenders the following war, since
it gives those who will be born from it a right to the throne of the next-of-kin, thus whole nations
participate in the royal privilege of fratricide and crimes against blood.
29
When friends introduced me, in Berlin, to the Pretender to the Throne of Albania, I wondered in what language I was
going to speak to this Albanian. But he was a German. In Florence, I met the Princesses of Greece, but these Greeks were
also Germans.
150
The Hundred Years War had no other cause than the close kinship between the Houses of France
and England; the War of Succession in Spain, the close kinship between the Houses of Spain and
France; the War of Succession in Austria, that between the Houses of Austria, Bavaria, Spain, Saxony,
France and even Sardinia inextricable tangles of excessive consanguinity.
24.
The Reign of the Bramble

The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive
tree, Reign thou over us.
But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my oil, whereby gods and men profit
and push myself forward among the trees?
And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us.
But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and
go to be promoted over the trees?
Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man,
and go to be promoted over the trees?
Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us.
And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come
and put your trust in my shadows: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour
the cedars of Lebanon. (Judges, IX, 8)
To be sure, the man who grabs the sceptre is not always the most gentle or the most inspired. He
may have only the ungracious virtue of the bramble.
He may be like the man of whom Machiavelli speaks: Who, because of the extreme villainy of
the actions by which he gained power cannot among very excellent men be cited.
Saint Louis, Saint Stephen, Saint Henry, King Canute there have been saintly kings, all the more
so as they were not fiends but is there one who has no blood on his hands?
Gautama left his palace by night, a prince stealing out as a thief steals in, and went to beg on the
roads and meditate in the forest.
When the people wanted to take Jesus to make a king of him, He fled from amongst them.
But Satan is called Prince of this World.
It is written of him that he is a murderer and a liar since the Beginning.
It is written of him that all the kingdoms of the world are delivered unto him and he disposeth of
them as he pleaseth.
25.
The Reign of Nullity
However unpleasant the virtue of the bramble, the absence of all value is worse. When barbarians
elect a chief, they never extol a coward, a fool, a madman or a reputed rascal, no more than they do a
hardened criminal or some innocent five-year-old.
151
The fact that fools, cowards, madmen, imbeciles, scoundrels, hypocrites and good-for-nothings
have each in turn acceded to the throne is due to the superstition of Blood, of which it is an axiom that
the virtue of the father lives on in the son.
But the gift for command is as rare as poetic genius. There are men of genius, but not families.
When a line has produced a great man or two, it seems to be spent for all time. A race of lords must
be relegated along with Centaurs and Hekatogheiroi to the domain of Mythology.
To be sure, to have a very strong chief may cost a nation a very strong price; it may cost incalculable
ruin and massacre. Especially if, to prove his strength, the strong chief has to crush all other strong
chiefs.
It therefore happens that election is resorted to when possible (i.e. when people agree, or are
sufficiently afraid of one another to compete pacifically). The strongest is elected by the strongest. This
is by far the best stratagem for placing the crown on the head most fit to wear it.
Nevertheless, it seems that people adopt it only when forced. It is what savage tribes, perpetually
at war, do, when the interim between two reigns, or the incapacity of their chief, spell mortal danger.
But the hereditary character is inherent in monarchy and in the beliefs on which it is founded, and
inevitably ends up by establishing a method of succession in which choice has no part. This eliminates
competition, at least competition in worth, and offers greater security by generally ensuring that the
greatest power and the government of all will fall into the hands of some mediocrity.
Thereafter, all the art of politics, of Ministers, of Councils, of the Court and of all who are at the
service of the King will consist in annihilating royal power, which is a public danger. The King will
be made to swear it will be his first act to respect the privileges of the great, of the clergy, of
Magistrates, City Counsils, of Parishes, of Guilds, in short, of everything that matters in the Kingdom
(and the rest will escape him because of its very pettiness). After which, the great business of his court
will be to keep him away from affairs for the only way to save the monarchic institution from falling to
pieces is to prevent the Monarch from manifesting his power and his mediocrity.
King Charles I, Louis XVIII, Alfonso XII ingenuously believed that Kings were meant to rule.
They learnt to their cost.
26.
Of Naked Royalty
Hans Christian Andersen tells the story of the veil that was being woven for the king an infinitely
precious veil, so fine that it was invisible.
It was the talk of the town. From time to time, the King and all his courtiers would visit the weaver
to see how the work was getting on and look at the veil, so precious and fine that nobody could see it.
The day of the ceremony arrived, and the King was clad with the utmost care lest the precious veil,
so fine that it was invisible, be torn.
When at last the King appeared before his people, a murmur of admiration ran through the crowd
for the precious veil was so fine that they could not see it.
Until a child asked, Mummy, why has the King no clothes on?
At that moment, everybody had to believe their own eyes and they said, Its true: the King is
naked, and they laughed.
Now, Royalty is like that veil: one day it becomes so fine that nobody can see it any more.
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If the King is there to rule nothing, if his only use is to be useless, then one is faced with the naked
truth that there is no need for him.
27.
Of Voluntary Bondage (La Botie)
This ingenuous cry is uttered by Etienne de la Botie in his Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, so
delightful because of its classic eloquence, so formidable because of the childlike truth it contains.
. . . It is a great misfortune to be subject to a master, of whom you can never be assured
that he will be good, since it is always in his power to be bad when he pleases. To have
many masters, that is the same, as to be so many times extremely unfortunate.
But, good God! What can this be? How shall we call this? What misfortune is this?
What sort of unhappy vice is it, to see an infinite number, not only obey, but serve, not
governed, but tyrannized, having neither goods, parents, children, nor Life itself which can
be called theirs? To bear the robberies, the debaucheries, the cruelties, not of an army,
not of a barbarous camp, against which we ought to spend our blood, nay, even our Lives,
but of one man; not a Hercules or Samson, but a little creature, and very often the most
cowardly and effiminate of the whole nation; one, not accustomed to the smoak of battles,
but scarcely to the dust of tilts and tournaments; not one, who can by force command man,
but wholly hindered from serving the meanest woman. . .
. . . You sow and plant that he may destroy. You furnish your houses to be a supply for
his robberies. You bring up your daughters that he may have wherewithal to satiate his
lust. You educate your sons, that he may train them to his wars, that he may send them
to slaughter, and make them the instruments of his rapine, the executors of his vengeance.
You wear out your own bodies, that he may sooth himself in his enjoyments, and wallow
in his filthy and beastly pleasures. You weaken yourselves to make him stronger and more
able to bridle and keep you under.
. . . I know not how it is, but Nature seems to have been wanting in one thing alone to
mankind, in not giving them the desire of Liberty; and yet Liberty is so great a good, and
so lovely, that where it is lost, all evils follow one upon another; and even the Good which
may remain, entirely loses its gust and flavour, being spoiled by servitude. . .
. . . The beasts, if men are not too deaf to hear, cry aloud to them LIBERTY. There are many
amongst them who die as soon as they are taken. As the fish loses its life as soon as it is out
of the water, so likewise those leave the light, and will not survive their natural freedom. If
the animals had amongst them orders and degrees, they would make, in my opinion, their
nobility consist in freedom. Others, from the greatest to the smallest, when they are taken,
make so great a resistance with their nails, claws, hoofs, feet and bills, that they sufficiently
show how dearly they prize what they lose. Then when they are taken, they give so many
apparent signs of the sense they have of their misfortune, that it is admirable to observe
them rather languish afterwards than live. . .
. . . But yet there is no need of attacking this single tyrant, there is no necessity of defending
ones self against him, he is defeated of himself, provided only the country does not submit
to servitude. There is no need of taking any thing from him, only give him nothing. There
is no occasion that the country should put itself to the trouble of doing anything for itself,
if it do nothing against itself.
153
. . . Certainly, just as the fire of a little spark becomes great and always increases, and the
more fuel it finds, the readier it is to burn, but if no fuel be added to it, it consumes itself.
Even so tyrants, the more they plunder. . .
It is then the people themselves who suffer, or rather give themselves up to be devoured,
since in ceasing to obey him they would be free. It is the people who enslave themselves,
who cut their own throats. . . 30
28.
Bondage, an ill fortune and an ill

Bondage is the reverse side of Power, its foundation and its food.
If everyone were free, no-one would be powerful. If everyone were powerful, no-one would be
powerful.
To the same degree that Power exalts, magnifies a man and turns his head, bondage vilifies, crushes
and depraves.
But while the grandeur of Power is illusory, conventional and based on false beliefs, the abasement
of bondage is real and destroys man body and soul.
It is the worst form of mutilation, worse than that of an armless person who can neither wash nor
dress nor feed himself; worse than that of a blind man who has to be led, worse than that of a eunuch
who is no longer a man. Bondage is the extreme mutilation, the removal of conscience, the loss of ones
self.
Aristotle declares that a slave has no soul. Plato doubts whether he has a complete soul.31
The fact is that when a slave is happy to be a slave because he is fed daily, has an easy life and does
not have to think for himself, he has the soul of a dog rather than that of a man.
Therefore the greatest of Greek philosophers have looked on slavery as a necessary and natural
institution, seeing that some men are slaves by nature. If one is to believe Aristotle, all barbarians
that is to say, non-Greeks were born for slavery.
However revolting we may find the philosophical serenity with which these things are said, we are
forced to admit that there are indeed born slaves, and they are even the great number.
Which does not justify the institution of slavery, always imposed by force alone, but explains why
coming-to-power of the great number inevitably brings Tyranny.
The man who is by nature a slave has no need to be marked on the shoulder or to wear an ankle
ring. He will always find his master, of whom he will always complain, yet whom he will never be able
to do without. He will find him in his comrade or his son or his chambermaid. He will always be a slave
even if he is rich and has many slaves of his own.
Even if he is a king. Who commands here? Is it the King our master or the mistress of the King?
Meanwhile, the man in chains is perhaps Epictetus or Aesop or Spartacus.
He is out of place in them as much as a lion in a cage or an elephant on a worksite or in a circus.
Nevertheless, bondage is not a simple misfortune, but, like the other man-made scourges an illfortune linked to evil.
30
31
Translators note: I am indebted to Professor S. K. Panter Brick for this copy of a translation done in 1735.
That man has lost half of his soul whom the day of his slavery surprises. (Homer)
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He who is in sin is the slave of sin say the scriptures. And elsewhere, Know the truth and the
truth shall set ye free. Doubtless the bondage referred to here is inner bondage, but there is nothing
external in human institutions which does not come from within and bad fruit cannot come from a good
tree.
All are slaves by their own fault whose conscience has capitulated, who see with other mens eyes
and think the thoughts that come to them from the outside, who blindly obey men or laws without
ever referring to justice and truth. All are slaves who forget or ignore that freedom is a high duty, a
responsibility one must assume at great cost and great risk, a rare and precious gift for which one must
be ready to pay a great price and which one must honour in others and in oneself.
teaches us: No
Concerning external and social freedom, let us not forget the lesson La BoCtie
tyrant, no exploiter, no corrupter can succeed without the complicity of those he uses ill. It is a great
truth, a truth that sets free.
29.
The Attempt to avoid Bondage or the Foundation of Cities
To obtain Power while avoiding bondage was the aim of the founders of the City, a third kind of
human society, this time completely artificial.
Whereas the state of nature which Rousseau invokes at the beginning of his Social Contract is
fictive, and well he knows it, the Social Contract which he presents as something imagined in order to
explain Society rationally is on the contrary a historic reality of which he seems ignorant.
It is the historic foundation of the Greco-Latin City (not of all human society, but of the City), it is
the foundation of the City and its laws, an artificial establishment.
Laws, as he clearly saw, are the essence of the City. And the starting point of this justice is a sworn
pact (justice comes from the same root as jurare, to swear). Its origin is indeed a contract, a pact sworn
in public and witnessed by the assembled gods of the tribe.
While the division of tribes on the occasion of marriage, or their non-division are equally natural and depend on the natural conditions of their territory, to assemble various separate tribes, rival
neighbours who have for long and in vain tried to overcome one another by war, is an operation which
must be rationally thought over, deliberately willed and carried out with extreme circumspection. You
have to consider the extension of arable land, sources of fresh water, rocks and escarpments suitable
for defence, rivers or a coast for expedition, prevailing winds, favourable orientation and, above all, the
augurs. You have to possess the master words of the ritual and the oath.
For here, the pact to be sworn is not between men, but between men and gods, and between the
gods themselves.
Each family brings its own gods some of whom are extremely powerful and consents to put
them in common only on condition that it keeps the pontificate from generation to generation. Each
father brings a lump of the earth in which the ashes and the souls of his fathers are mingled. He brings
a flame from his hearth. Of all these things that go into the making of the fatherland (gods, earth and
fire), a Common Hearth and a Common Home will be made. This will be the City.
Thus the City of Antiquity is not, like ours, a conglomeration that has grown unplanned and constantly been rectified, but a thing built once and for all, according to plan, like a house or a temple, in
conformity with the requirements of Ritual. The plan of Rome was traced on the soil with a plough by
Romulus at the foundation ceremony.
The social contract with the gods is that henceforth, they will deign to live among men and bring
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prosperity and victory to the city which is theirs. In return, they will be honoured and nourished by
a fixed number of sacrifices at the feasts of obligation. And even if the enemy tries to lure them into
his camp by cunning sacrifices and insidious evocation, they will remain faithful to their city, for they
would lose all if they allowed it to perish.
Gift for gift. It is the inverse of the Alliance of Abraham and Israel. The initiative is human and it
is the infidelity of the gods that must be warded against.
The Spirit calls to prayer and sacrifice. The Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil invents the Contract.
Devotion is pure when sacrifice is offered up as a supreme act of love. It is heathen (whatever the object
may be) when Sacrifice is looked upon as an indirect means of winning Profit.
The contract between men, between heads of families, is that they will treat each other as equals,
with an equality unknown among brothers in the same family. Not that they are of equal strength, but
because they decline to try their strength against each other. They commit themselves to combine their
strength against the enemy that is to say against more or less everything that is not included in the
Contract.
A legal, conventional, fictitious equality which will fail to mask the differences.
Each will swear to respect the gods of the others. Exchange will be free and the law will provide
the rules. People will come together to share, to trade and to compete with one another.
They will have equal votes in the councils, they will share honours and offices, they will alternate
in command and in obedience.
These are the principal clauses of the Social Contract which is the Foundation of the Pagan City.
But the Social Contract can have many forms. Royalty also entails an explicit contract: all the
Orders of the Nation swear fidelity to the new King who, when he is crowned, swears to respect rights,
customs, freedom, privileges, charters and constitutions.
But under Royalty, freedom is something granted by exception or is an acquired privilege, established, renewed and delimited by contract that is, by oath, whereas in the Republic, Freedom is
fundamental and the Social Contract is the very constitution of the State.
On the other hand, Athens, Rome and other Antique Cities are founded under the sign of Royalty.
The families who compose the City keep their structure, which is patriarchal. This confirms our definition of the City as a society of a third degree. The form proper to it, the Republic, rises from the ashes
of the other two, which it consumes in the flame called Political Freedom.
30.
The Play of Freedom and Power, or Perpetual Revolution
Freedom is a devouring game, a dissolvent that melts rock. It wears away solid traditions and the
armature of authority.
Freedom loosens and disperses; Power rallies, attaches and leads. Freedom and Power are contrary
currents. Their encounter results in the Social Contract and the life of the City.
Their combat takes place in the heart of every citizen, in the home and in the family, at school and
in the workshop, sometimes in the street and always in assemblies.
According to his position, his possessions, his convictions, every man sides with one or the other.
Whence the two Parties without which Politics or the Life-of-the-City would be impossible.
The fact is that there are never more than two parties, even when you can name twenty. They are
156
only subdivisions of the Two.
Indeed, there are always two parties, even when there is only The One Party (which is a contradiction in terms and an arrogant lie). The One Party is the one that has succeeded, for the time being, in
stifling the other.
The Two Parties are that of Power and that of Freedom.
Whoever holds Power also holds Freedom, that of imposing his will. The other party defends its
freedom and for that purpose seeks power.
Its coming to power does not put Freedom into power, but leaves the adversary free to seek it.
Freedom alone would be pure dissipation. But freedom restricted and opposed by Power becomes
an explosive force.
Almost inevitably, the explosion from time to time blows up the machinery. This accident is called
Revolution.
But when explosion alternates with reaction the engine runs regularly.
The life of the city can therefore be defined as a Perpetual Revolution. What perpetuates it is
Reaction.
This alternating pulsion may very well be named as Marx names it: the Dialectics of History, since
it is indeed the historic law of civilizations when they emerge from the Patriarchal state.
But if it is a law of history that the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, it would be a
mistake to think that it will stop for good at either of the extremes for the unscientific reason that we
believe it desirable.
No dialectics or swinging from right to left is not the machine for producing freedom or justice.
Nor is it the rocket that will unfailingly hit the moon of happiness.
31.
A Third Thing, of which one must not speak

Then is there no power that goes hand is hand with freedom?
Is there no freedom of power and no power of freedom?
Yes, love.
But that is another matter, and one that has no place, according to the clever, in public affairs.
32.
Concerning two Rabbits and the Tightness of the Law
Two rabbits had been put into a meadow. They were not staked like goats, or fenced in with wire
netting. They were tied to each other by a fairly long string around their necks.
So they were free to go where they liked. And they ran about, one where he liked and the other
where he liked. Each running where he liked was suddenly jerked backwards by the string, which made
him topple over.
O men, how tight your laws are! From time to time they strangle you and jerk you to the ground.
And you continue to pull on the string, O prisoners of unlove!
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33.
Contrasts and Contract
But a contract even a marriage contract is anything but a work of love. It is a task engendered
by the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.
With all the precautions and agreements it includes, with the representative, administrative and
repressive instruments needed to carry it out, the social contract is a guarantee of freedom in unlove.
How can people live together in unlove and yet without destroying one another?
How can one exploit ones neighbour without exhausting him?
How can one command him without his revolting?
How can one get the most benefit and pleasure out of society for the least effort without harming
oneself by ruining the whole thing?
These are the terms of the problem the Contract attempts to solve, or at least which it poses.
For nothing is appeased. It is from the Pact that the struggle starts off, and opposition, competition
and combine are given free rein.
And freedom of unlove by contract eliminates the old forms of bondage only to create new ones
through risk, dupery and misunderstanding.
34.
The Reverse of Civil Freedom: Slavery
Moreover, like the waves of the sea which move and shine, the celebrated freedom of the Antique
City is only a surface beneath which lie depths of indispensable and unshakable bondage.
To begin with, the tasks necessary for the maintenance of the citizens life, surroundings and comfort, and for his leisure to go in for politics, have always depended there on slavery. When Athens was
at the height of its prosperity, the proportion was four hundred thousand slaves to twenty-four thousand
free men, and the more democratic and free the city became, the more the number of slaves increased.
We know that slavery raised a question in the conscience of some obscure philosophers thanks to
Aristotles only too well known refutation of their arguments. But no tribune or legislator ever proposed
to resorb it or even suggested that it might be desirable to do so.
The Slave War which for a few years threatened the power of Rome by ravaging the southern
provinces, was not evidence of an invincible truth constantly rising from its ashes, but something that
seemed accidental and was immediately drowned in blood, buried under innumerable crosses and forgotten.
Although, for reasons of humanity or for less avowable motives, slaves were set free more frequently during periods of decadence, these were always particular cases. At the same time, the taste for
freedom began to degenerate among most free men. Wretchedness and debt drove the great numbers of
the desperate to sell their children and even to prefer chains to their own freedom. And far-flung, easy
expeditions abroad brought whole peoples on the market.
35.
Bondage among Free Men

But slavery is far from being the only reverse of the citizens freedom.
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Great as the proportion of slaves to free men is in the Antique City, that of the bondsmen of freedom
is almost as great among free men.
Freedom by contract is due only to those who have sworn the Pact, the heads of family who in procession followed the copper ploughshare of the Founder as he traced the square of the sacred enclosure.
Just as the enclosure delimits once and for all the City properly speaking, the procession determines the
number of authentic citizens, the Fathers.
The Fathers alone are citizens; their families are not, or, are so only through their medium.
The Plebs, the common people are, originally at least, not citizens either, no more than are foreigners, and for the same reasons: i.e. they are not included in the Contract. The fact of being born in
the city confers no right as is obvious from the dogs and rats which may be born at the Qurinal or the
Capitol without becoming Quirites.
What was originally called the people, Populus, Civites, Demos, was in all ways distinct from the
vulgar mass and at first opposed it with all its pride. It was a People of princes and priests.
Such were the Fathers of Democracy.
36.
Origin, Nature and Growth of the Plebs

As for the Plebs, it was formed of foreigners yes, sons of foreigners.
Foreigners. Not guests, ambassadors, visitors, merchants or pilgrims with whom one exchanges
compliments and gifts, but. . . refugees.
Every sanctuary (the City among others) was a place of asylum. Whoever fled there unarmed and
suppliant fell under the protection of the gods and could not be pursued in these precincts, just as he
could not be driven away or given over or beaten or captured without sacrilege.
Outlaws, robbers, runaway slaves and prisoners, vagabonds, renegades, the excommunicated, the
shipwrecked, the survivors of all natural and social catastrophe found safety there, a pittance and employment. They settled for life in the district to which they were assigned, packed together like animals.
Thanks to this promiscuity, their numbers quickly multiplied thus providing the City with numerous
benefits and just as many worries. They constituted a huge supply of labour, gifted with capacities and
resources slaves do not possess. The army recruited from among them but they were also dangerous
and burdensome, and in the end became an enormous social problem.
The Plebeians at work built the City and at war saved it. They cultivated, manufactured, put money
aside, trafficked, grew rich, intrigued for advancement, made demands, constituted assemblies, appointed leaders, rioted, went on strike, seceded, won rights, laws and honours, obtained gods and forced
their way into every office, even into the Consulate and Priesthood.
37.
The Nature and Cause of Patrician Resistance and its Motive
For the Fathers, the social ascension of the Plebs was an invasion, their struggle for rights, extortion
aggravated by ingratitude and sacrilege, and their pretension to equality, impious insolence.
It took the plebs of Rome three hundred and nine years to wrest from them the right to marry.32
32
According to historians, plebeian unions took place more ferarum, until the Roman year CCCIX.
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To look upon a Plebeian as his equal before the law would have been for a Father to insult the gods;
witnesses to the Pact in which the latter had no part, to insult the Conscript Fathers, to insult the very
essence of the Fatherland.
Patrician resistance was something quite other than the harshness of greed or the arrogance of
nobility. It was the defence and guardianship of a sacred trust, that of rights and goods which were
inalienable and immutable in principle. But the perversity of the times, the push of the rising mob,
the cleverness of traffickers, the sly manoeuvres of Tribunes, foreign intrigue, fashionable slackness of
morals and the unhealthy hot-air Utopias of the Rhetors ended by leaving the sacred trust defenceless
against dispersion and plunder. To which it was the duty of the Fathers to resist with all the sombre
and lucid courage of rear guard soldiers fighting, not for victory or life, but to hinder by their fall the
inevitable advance of the enemy.
Alas! there will always be good soldiers for bad causes. Heroic defenders of injustice, privileged
but doomed; forever losers. Vanquished throughout the ages, and still standing. Irreprochable supporters of every form of oppression. Persecutors of all the saints by legal means.
Stony-hearted, wooden-headed, they deserve the oaken crown.
Without them, diehards of yesterday, today and all times, at all times opposed to the times, every
conquest would be havoc pure and simple, every revolution simple subversion and pure devastation.
38.
The Degrees of Bondage in the Noble House.

The Subjection of Sons
In the noble house, the relation of son to father is the same as that of plebeian to noble and, as we
have seen, is even what determines the respective names of Proletarian and Patrician33 .
More exactly, the situation of the son, when affection does not intervene to make it more pleasant,
is more strictly dependent and more like that of the slave.
The Father can expose him at birth. It goes without saying that he educates, rules and chastises
him as he likes, marries him as he thinks fit, and has authority to put him to death or even to sell him.
As for the father, he in turn depends on his sons in death for ritual sacrifice, as they have depended on
him during his lifetime and they rarely revolt or run away. That is why the primitive structure of the
family remains unchanged for centuries.
Nevertheless, if the social classes reflect the degrees of subordination in the family, it is to be
expected that relations between members of the family will in turn be affected by civil revolution. As
time goes on, the children begin to speak in a new tone of voice; they answer back, demand to go out,
bang doors in protest, flaunt their opinions and refuse authority. The respectful names they have hitherto
given their parents are replaced by diminutives or nicknames.
Wherever the state gives itself a parliament, every house becomes a hell of shouting.
Little wonder, then, that one of the first effects of the rise of the Proletariat is the destruction of the
Family.
The Communes of New China boast of having already done away with it, and anyone who cares
can go and see the result.
There is nothing surprising in this, since Proletariat34 means a swarm of brats.
33
34
Scourges, III, 61
The etymological meaning, as we have seen.
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To found a family, one ought to have reached manly maturity.
39.
The Subjection of Women
Monogamy, the only legal form of marriage in the City, can have no other basis than the principle
of the equality of the sexes. But during the whole of the classical period, this principle remained abstract
and vague. Only by devious means could woman have her share of rights and the right to freedom.
In Homeric times, the dowry was given to the father by the future husband, transaction very much
like a sale. But from the creation of the City down to our day, the dowry seems very much like payment
of compensation, which is not more flattering to the esteem of the object.
The lady devoted to service of her household and the cradle found herself kept strictly away from
public affairs and from all business as well as from the arts, learning and ideas.
In friendly receptions and gatherings her charms were replaced by naked dancing girls, slaves expert at pleasure, painted ephebes. The lady did not attend banquets, not even if they were philosophical
and platonic.
At last the hour came for her reign, more or less clandestine and therefore all the more effective.
Her hour came with opulence and the ensuing lukewarmth and slackness. Here again, civil revolution had its effect on family relations.
Thanks to the formation and the rise of a middle class, woman was given a higher place in the
Family35 .
Wherever the Bourgeoisie took the place of the Nobility, heads of family lost their authority and
were sometimes reduced to the condition of a guest or of one more child in their own homes.
Aristophanes wrote a farce, spiced with obscene wit, in which women seize the tribunes at night and
settle public affairs in their own way: a picture of Bourgeoise Civilisation just as true as it is comical.
For, even if they do not sit in Parliament, even if they do not have the right to vote, they govern the
governors whose mistresses they are in the proper sense of the word. They operate behind the scenes
and pull the strings. But this is above all due to the fact that the Liberal Republic is woman by nature.
Whatever the case may be, it is the triumph of tonguewagging. Gossip and conjugal quarelling
become the model of the system: dispute is sovereign, lays down the law and takes decisions.
Not that there are bearable, and even excellent, parliamentary regimes just as there are accomplished women who know how to make their homes havens of happiness for all.
But it is not good for a woman to command unless exceptionally, for reasons of duty or necessity. In
the same way, it is not good that moneyminded men run the state like a house of trade or an exploitation.
It is not good that women put themselves forward to show that they are capable and to take their
revenge for the times of segregation and contempt.
That man is superior to woman, or she to him is a vain debate, since their value lies in their harmony
and the question does not then arise. But undeniably inferior is the man who acts the woman and the
woman who acts the man, and she makes herself ridiculous and unhappy.
Thus the Bourgeoisie, as soon as it reigns, presents a pitiful sight, not because it is deficient, but
because it is not in its place. In its place it ensures the happiness of the nation. In countries from which
35
Actually, the place of Woman in the Family is that of the middle class in society.
161
it is missing or where it is gagged and reduced to silence, there is a yawning gulf between the lords
and the common people and almost always, the poor undergo oppression. Its role is to mediate and
reconcile, which is the role of woman. Its place is neither at the top nor at the bottom. Its place is in the
middle. In the heart. Womans place is not the first, but the best.
However, when the Middle Class begins to prosper, to acquire culture and refinement, the advantages it possesses over the other two classes become only too clear. It can use them to worm its way into
the first rank. To gain strength, it can join forces with the plebs in which it has never ceased to belong
by right; to gain lustre it can make an alliance with the nobility in which it partly belongs in fact. It can
serve as a link between both, or make use of one against the other in order to get the upper hand.
We have said enough in the previous chapter about the Power of Money, about its deceptive sweetness and pernicious facilities, for there to be any surprise at what it can do and undo when it arms itself,
makes and executes the law, teaches and makes forecasts.
But as soon as the liberal Regime develops, logic requires that Woman shall openly enter the game.
It might be the saving of the Republic to make it an avowedly Matriarchal Institution and women
should not merely be granted the right to vote and to accede to office but be given preference and
precedence everywhere in order to rid their domination (undergone in any case) of its ambiguous
because not legal aspect.
True Matriarchy would be the reign of the Mother, Wife and Housewife; whereas, by closing the
door to the virtues of women and leaving it ajar to their mischief and manoeuvres, the Republic becomes
the canopy of the prostitute.
40.
The Subjection of the Client
Vico derives the word Client from the Greek Clu to shine, because the lustre of the noble House
is reflected on its satellites and their number makes its glory.
The Client was the hereditary and legitimate sponger, the official bootlicker and accredited toady. I
know some houses in which you can still find that sort of accessory. But the Antique City granted them
legal status.
Their degradation was not the consequence of necessity nor was their unhappy state an accident,
but truly the result of vanity and luck. Theirs was fatuous and pleasant wretchedness.
In the regime of Princes, the same species are called courtiers and Balthazar Castiglione wrote a
treatise on the rules of their art. They had heroic names and their coats of arms depicted wild beasts and
eagles, for they descended from great warmongering lords whom the Kings had been clever enough to
domesticate.
***
There are three degrees of slavery to sin for those who are lacking in wickedness, crimes or vices.
The first degree is to lose ones life at earning ones living because one is addicted to the good
things of this world and always wants more of them. This makes the load heavier and heavier, and there
is no end to it.
The second degree is to spend ones life killing time, chatting, laughing, amusing oneself, which
whirls one faster and faster into emptiness and has no sense.
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I know a slave of the third degree. He went to every ball, supper, show and entertainment but was
not amused. Among drinkers, he alone did not drink. Alone among the talkative, he listened. Alone
among the rich, he had no fortune, no home, no place. But it did not show, for all his wealth was in his
dress and all his gains went into sending flowers. His tails and his flowers were his instrument of work.
He worked from ten oclock in the evening till three oclock in the morning. He knew that Madame
de. . . s lover wanted to buy a pearl necklace, that Count Johnnie, the mad young devil, had to find a
creditor before noon next day for the sum of . . . or lose his honour. And he did not neglect to slip into
the servants quarters where he also had business in hand with the matre dhtel and the chambermaid.
41.
The Soldier, the Whore and the Wage-earner
Let us leave noble houses and the seamy side of their magnifience and take another look at the free
city and the seamy side of its freedom.
The bondage of the Soldier, of the whore and of the Wage-earner have more than one feature in
common. Their ressemblances throw light on each of the three professions.
Their bondage is not from birth like that of the slave, or imposed on them by force, but results from
choice. That choice is more or less forced, it is true, either by the wickedness of men, or the pressure of
poverty or again by the irresistible lure of illusory freedom.
The comparison of the soldier to the whore will no doubt shock the decent citizen who reads these
lines, but if the shock does not blind him, it may open his eyes to a few new equations of the Scienceof-Good-and-Evil.
The soldier is the honour of his country. He does his duty as a man. The whore is the shame of her
family and stains the honour of women.
At school, children are taught to admire the soldier and encouraged to imitate his virtues. But
where the whore is concerned, common reprobation is such that one scarcely dare mention her aloud.
But that granted, it is marvelous how these opposites meet. The two make such a good pair that
they are made for each other as they say.
They resemble each other by the task that constitutes their bondage and by the bondage that constitutes their innocence. They resemble each other in the motive of their choice when they have chosen
their condition, or else in the compulsion they have undergone, and in their self-delusion or their selfjustification.
The function of the one is to kill, of the other, to fornicate, and in exchange the public pays them
and provides for their upkeep. To kill is in itself the most abominable of crimes. To fornicate, for all
that it is disgusting licentiousness is not even an offence recognised by law.
In honour of the soldier, the argument is that he braves death. (Does this mean that the right to
crime can be bought for a risk?). And while she wallows in debauchery for her own gain, and ruins
morals which are a common treasure, he, content with a little pay, breaks himself into his duties and
offers self-sacrifice for the good of all.
But here we are playing on the words good of all for the good can have moral value only if all
has a universal meaning, whereas in the case in Question it is purely and strictly collective, and the
good the soldier does his own people (assuming he does them any) is merely the wrong he does others.
Besides, all the good intentions and virtues attributed to him and all the glory lavished on him make
the soldier laugh with the other soldiers and the prostitutes.
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It was probably just the opposite that made him enlist, the feeling that at last he could be rid of every
moral hindrance, of every appearance of decency and self-restraint. In the army, he has leave, drink and
debauchery. There are discipline and chores as well, of course, but you are rid of responsibility for your
own behaviour and you do not have to think! And over there, far away, there will be new countries and
new women, strokes of luck, successful raids, plunder and rape. . .
What brought the girl into the street was certainly not the attraction of sensual pleasure, for she
is quite incapable of the evil thoughts that muddy the blood of the little college girl. She operates
with mechanical indifference beyond desire, shame or disgust. What draws her is the bar, the lights
of the night, the juke-boxes, the adventurous encounters which will perhaps open up a sunny path to
honourable retirement and a villa, or even for marvels are not impossible, after all the perfect
happiness of lawful wedlock!
The honest reader who is not yet outraged by this comparison of the soldier to the prostitute will
not fail to lose his temper with us when we come to the third term of our comparisons: the wage earner.
What? The honest working man, the head of family who wears himself out for the ten mouths he
must feed, the worker of political speeches and electoral posters slaving away in the factory or the mine
or the foundry, the day labourer in the fields to whom we all owe our bread!
It is quite right to contrast the working man with the whore and the soldier who are instruments
of degradation and destruction, while he produces and makes what everyone needs. Indeed another
common characteristic of the whore and the soldier is their horror of work. The most active of pimps
and recruiters is the demon of sloth.
But the character common to the three is: more or less willing slavery.
The mark of the slave is to be sold, to have sold the primordial right to govern himself, the right to
do what he likes, the right to judge his own acts and to refuse these his conscience loathes.
It is, as we have seen, the unhappy lot of the worker who possesses nothing, to be forced to sell,
not the product of his work, but his work itself and therefore to sell himself in hourly and daily pieces
and to put a price on each slice of his time and his life.
One sells his arms, another his legs, another his head, another his taste, another his verve or talent,
another his laugh, another his pen, another his ideas.
For there are not only proletarians among wage-earners. There are not only poor and wretched
slaves. There have always been, and still are, overfed slaves, fat eunuchs, slaves keepers of slaves,
served and hated like masters.
And the slave the most gravely affected is precisely the one who is not conscious of his ill, so
alienated is his conscience itself. The director of the armament plant, with the huge salary, the distillery
manager who is so wealthy, kill and degrade their neighbour just like the strumpet or the soldier and
deserve condemnation or else they are all to be acquitted as slaves no more responsible for their acts
than is an inanimate object.
To the extent that a worker has been forced to sell himself, he is a slave.
To the extent that he could have remained free at the cost of greater risk and hardship, but preferred
pay, he is a prostitute.
And the man who left his sheep-croft on Gevaudan hillside and the paths of the wind above the
clouds to take a safe job as a doorkeeper in town, or punching holes in tickets in the Parisian subway
he too churned in his narrow head dreams of fortune, adventure, liberation. . .
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42.
The Prisoner, the Convict and the Madman

Freedom, for the citizen as for the city, is self-government.
It is to know where one is going and to be able to go where one likes.
It is to let ones words and acts spring from within.
The source of Freedom is within.
Freedom is bounty and belongs to those who give themselves.
You must not try to take liberties.
Look at the prisoner, the convict, the madman. They took some; they took liberties. That is why
they have lost what they had.
43.
A Chain and a Whip
In a great Capital, opulent and free, I saw the passers-by hastening in file between the walls and
along the asphalt.
They looked as if they were fleeing, back bent, head bowed as if they were being lashed. But
nobody was pursuing them except other fugitives and I could not see the whip.
They were all tied to each other, but I could not see the chain.
They were all prisoners of the station clock rising at the end of the street like a sinister star.
44.
Freedom within the Law according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Now that we have sounded bondage, let us consider Freedom.
Rousseau affirms that the law of the City is the foundation of the citizens freedom, for the City
is a form of association which defends and protects with all their common strength the person and the
goods of each associate, thanks to which each uniting with all nevertheless obeys himself only and
remains as free as before.
By what inconceivable art, he writes in his article on Political Economy in the Encyclopedia,
has the means been found to subject men in order to set them free? To employ in service of the State
the goods, the hands, the very life of ones fellowmen without compelling or consulting them? To
enslave their will by their own permission? To make their consent overrule their refusal, and force them
to punish themselves when they act against their will?
How is it that all obey and no-one commands? That they serve and have no master, all the more
free in that, while apparently subjected, not one of them loses any freedom except such as may harm
someone else? These marvels are the work of the Law. To the Law alone do men owe justice and
freedom. It is this salutary instrument of the common will that re-establishes legally the natural equality
between men.
Hey! Solitary walker let us not force our talent: we would do nothing with grace! Your flight of
eloquence does not sweep up our assent. Nothing could be less true than to say that, once we have been
caught up in the machinery of rights and duties, orders, supervision and prohibition, we obey ourselves
alone and you yourself have put it into words excellently in your Discourse on Inequality. All rush
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into their chains thinking they are ensuring their freedom, for, with enough reason to perceive the
advantages of a civil establishment, they lack enough experience to forsee its dangers. And elsewhere:
. . . Such was, or must be the origin of society and the laws which gave new strength to the rich,
destroyed natural freedom irrevocably and there-after subjected the whole of the human species to
work, bondage and wretchedness.
Whom are we to believe? Rousseau or Jean-Jacques?
The truth lies between these extremes: Civic Freedom is negative, fictive and relative.
45.
The Negative Aspect of Civil Freedom
To explain what we mean by negative, let us use Rousseaus own words. In his eighth Letter from
the Hills, he writes: Liberty consists not so much in acting according to ones will as in not being
subjected to that of others. There is the catch: to believe that oppression is not so hard when it is
anonymous, general and systematic.
First of all, where is the law capable of enacting itself independently of the arbitrary judgement and
force of any man? If we are subject to the Law, we are at the same time subject to those who act in its
name, and the fac that they know nothing, want nothing and are worth nothing does not prevent them
from always getting the better of us. Rousseau seems to take it for granted that someone elses athority is
the only possible danger to ones personal freedom. But personal authority is not necessarily oppressive
or harassing, no more then Law without personal authority is necessarily liberating and formative.
Alas for the man who is caught up in the machinery of the law, that faceless, heartless and unhearing
power. The author of The Twenty-Fifth Hour36 tells how a man is deported, imprisoned, beaten,
tortured, dragged from one camp to another, forced to hard labour year after year without having been
judged or condamned, without being able to appeal to anyone, or blame anyone. His torturers are not
wicked people and are not acting of their own accord. They know not what they do and perhaps they
will be forgiven, but that does not make their victim less wretched or set him free.
46.
The Fictional Aspect of Civil Freedom
The citizens freedom is fictional in that it consists almost entirely in taking part in the game of
politics.
It consists in sitting at meetings, listening to speeches, opining, protesting and voting. The game
may not be to his taste and wasting his time at it may not be his object. But he is faced with the
obligation to vote and finds himself forced to be free or at least to hold his tongue if he thinks he is not.
Rousseau holds up the admirable example of the Roman and Athenian crowds busy at all hours of
the day with tongue-work. It is certain, Aristotle remarks, that it would be impossible to do ones
duty as a citizen if one had to earn ones living. In our turn, we observe that if duty consists in earning
the bread one eats, politics is not for honest and hardworking people.
Let us add that this game is a game for dupes, a conjuring trick and a booby-trap. For it is a mockery
to claim that the choice of a representative, oven if he is one I did not vote for, is an effect of my will,
seeing that I took part in the elections and therefore in his elections and that in consequence, the laws he
will elaborate with or in spite of other representatives represent my will, so that by submitting myself
36
Virgil Georghiou.
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to them I find myself in exactly the same position as someone who, being his own master, does what he
likes.
For my will combined with that of many other persons, in the same way as numbers are combined,
adds up to a result which is quite as foreign to me as it is to the others, and looks very like the outcome of
chance. Actually, drawing lots was a common procedure for choosing the holder of authority (Aristotle
is of the opinion that it is the suitable one for democracy).
Therefore voting can be regarded only as a game of chance or perhaps as a card game in which the
cleverness of the players, or something more than cleverness, intervenes opportunely to correct the luck
of the game.
What do they hope to get out of it? Freedom, justice and peace - but is putting these at stake not a
way of losing them?
Civil liberty is of the order of artifice and convention, like everything else proper to the City, being
neither natural liberty nor spiritual liberation. It is not true, as Rousseau claims, that man has completely
renounced natural liberty to find it transposed onto the social plane. My liberty is to do what I like: I
have not renounced it and I intend to keep it as far as possible, neither have I renounced deliverance.
If I had neither of these liberties, then that of choosing my leaders and even that of commanding my
fellowmen could not at all compensate me for such real and immeasurable loss.
The truth is that I have become too cowardly, too perverted and too reasonable to miss the forest,
wild beasts, heat and cold and the cannibals cooking pot. I have not bartered my primitive freedom for
civic freedom, but sold it for a share in security. Rather than boast of my civilised advantages, I confess
the shame of my neck skinned by my dog collar.
But I am not such a dog as not to rejoice at the fact that most of my outer and inner acts remain
outside the knowledge of the law. I take the utmost care to do without it, without is protection, its
support and its rather too costly good graces. I am not so imprudent as to deplore its blind spots and its
defects, for, were it to become more strictly perfect, I should be much too afraid that it might trespass
into the field where I enjoy my freedom as a good savage and at the same time as a child of God.
47.
The Total Gift or Sacrifice
Considering it a primordial right beyond all convention and above nature that man should keep as
his own the essential part of him which is himself, his conscience and his soul, failing which one cannot
speak of a free man and scarcely of a man (the word would be void of meaning and the man void of
being) it is not without certain reservations that we approach the Social Contract such as Rousseau
formulates it in astonishingly absolute terms:
The clauses of the Contract. . . although they may never have been formally enounced. . . are
everywhere the same, everywhere tacitly admitted and recognised. . . These clauses, as a matter of
course, may all be summed up in one, namely: the total conveyance of each associate with all his goods
to the whole community. . . Each giving himself to all gives himself to no-one and, as there is not one
associate over whom one does not acquire the same rights as those one grants over oneself, one gains
the equivalent of what one loses and greater power to keep what one has. . .
Each of us puts in common his person and all his power under the supreme guidance of the General
Will and we receive as a body each member as an indivisible part of the Whole.
At that instant, in place of the particular person of each of the contractors, this act of association
produces a collective moral body composed of as many numbers as the Assembly has voices. From the
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same act, the Assembly receives its unity, its common Self, its life and will. This public person. . .
It is remarkably well said and very clear, but nevertheless untrue. Neither reason nor the Scriptures
indicate that the total gift is due to the City.
The total gift is not called Contract but Religious Sacrifice. And if the sacrifice has consumed,
melted and transmuted the offering, what need is there to go on talking about rights, advantages and
clauses?
The ancient sacrifice of Foundation may lead one to believe that it was a total gift. The immolation
is carried out by effigy, by the sacrifice of an animal, and the animals blood is substututed for the blood
of the man. And this gift can go only to the gods of the city, to Pallas Athena representative of all
the gods for the Athenians or to the goddess Rome for the Romans. These goddesses are obiously the
Public Person, the common Self, the collective moral body oveked by Rousseau, except that he brings
them to birth at the instant, which is contrary to nature, contrary to the immortal nature of the gods.
The question is whether one believes in those gods and whether one has the right to sacrifice to
them.
48.
A Great Find: profitable sacrifice
The total gift can and must be made only to the one God who is One and All. The total gift
is martyrdom and mystic union. Pagan sacrifice is not a total gift but a simulacre. In reality, it is a
technique resulting from the Science-of-Good-an-Evil: profitable sacrifice is a fundamental discovery
of that science. Prayer becomes a formula that puts the god under compulsion. The god is a means,
sacrifice a procedure and profit its end.
Leaving Mythology aside, the civil establishment is a contract, an act of convenience and not of
worship.
And it is not a gift, but a profitable exchange.
How could it be taken for a gift of being, when it is not even the relinquishment of having, since
by it one gains more power to keep what one has.
My arm to the king
My heart to the ladies
My soul to God
Says an old motto, and the gallant gentleman whose device it was, having cut himself in three,
thought, not without reason, that he had bestowed the best part on service by giving it his arm.
49.
Contract: an advantageous exchange
The social contract consists in ensuring possession of oneself, or freedom, in exchange for certain
services.
The protection of goods in exchange for certain taxes.
The confirmation of marriages and inheritances in exchange for certain verifications.
The latitude to carry on lucrative business in exchange for certain restrictions fixed by law.
Access to the offices and dignities of Government in exchange for respect of the Constitution.
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The arbitration of the law-courts in exchange for abstention from bloodshed in private quarrels and
on condition that one bears arms for the common cause only.
These are the main clauses of the Contract. As we see, each has its per contra but it is understood
from the outset that the advantages outnumber the obligations.
Moreover, it will be the constant preoccupation of each to push the advantages and reduce the
obligations. Also, to let the obligations weigh on others as far as possible and to grab the advantages
for oneself, as is natural between persons brought together by self-interest and not by love.
Good-institutions, our solitary social-contracted author continues, are those which best denature
man and deprive him of his absolute existence in order to give him a relative one.
It is good to have goods, and natural to take pleasure in them, but the same feeling denatured and
become relative (valid no longer in itself but only by comparison) is to find pleasure only in outdoing
others.
It is beautiful to be free, and natural and reasonable to be proud of it, but the same freedom, relative
and denatured, is to obtain freedom to subjugate someone else.
Nothing is better or more beautiful that to love ones neighbour. But love does not know what to do
with too many neighbours and friendship with passers-by is impossible. The same feeling, denatured,
becomes amiability and politeness. Conventional simulation of the thing is the only obligation. Besides,
it is opportune.
Vere dignum et justum est, acquum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere, Domine,
sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus37 , and on the occasion of great ceremonies, all the families of the
City attend joyfully or in tears, but always unanimously, whether for commemoration, or supplication or
mourning or victory. It is the one and only moment when discussion, argument and discord are hushed,
when all bow in recollection, credulous and docile, ready for reconciliation, for changes of heart and
generous resolutions. There is not a leader-of-men possessed of any shrewdness who does not say to
himself that if religion and the gods did not exist they would have to be invented as being the easiest
and the most effective means of augmenting power.
Civic and utilitarian worship, the very definition of heathen religion.
In the collusion of Religion with Power, it is not Power that is sanctified but Religion that becomes
imperious and lucrative.
Moreover, its prestige dwindles in proportion to its venality. Every mystical doctrine degenerates
into politics says Peguy. He is describing the spiritual evolution of the City.
Every city at its foundation is just as religious as it is royal and tribal, then it becomes more and
more democratic and profane.
And everything would dry up, crumble and fall into dust if Esprit de Corps did not survive and
spring up anew like an aftermath of denatured paganism.
50.
The Ambiguous Nature of Solidarity
Solidarity is a convenient word, in great honour today among preachers of morals. And if by
morals they mean social utility, they are right to consider the word and its content excellent. It is the
37
Just it is indeed and meet, right and for our lasting good, as that we should always and everywhere give thanks to thee.
Lord, Holy Father, almighty and eternal God.
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quarrystone with which human cities are built, and the ambiguity it contains should be recognized as
being of public utility.
Indeed, no sooner does one look at it with the eyes of the spirit than one sees its amalgam decompose into two elements of unequal value which have opposite meanings: one is Charity, the other, Esprit
de Corps.
The one or the other may constitute solidarity, and one or the other contribute to it in some degree.
In the heart of man they are mingled. But by their essence and their effects they are distinct and opposed,
and must be opposed.
It goes without saying that charity (by which I simply mean the fact of loving ones neighbour as
oneself) is the surest factor of social cohesion. It goes without saying that whoever loves need only do
what he wants to and he will do well, that there is no need to compel him to refrain from injustice no
need of threat to remind him of his duties; that wherever charity reigns there can be neither fraud nor
theft nor violence nor division nor oppression nor revolt.
51.
Fear and the Lure of Gain
However, it is not on charity that the structure of the terrestial City rests. Charity on the one hand
is too scarce to support such a weight, on the other, too precious for any utilitarian purpose.
The law of men is founded rather on Fear, which makes them refrain from evil in order to avoid
punishment, and alson on The Lure of Gain and on Glory, which make them endeavour to do good in
order to have goods and to dominate one another. This explains why people put up with the law of their
country, and how all together profit by the advantage each has sought for himself alone. It does not
explain why one fine day the same people suddenly cease to fear evil and punishment provided they
succeed in imposing the said law on other people, or why they consider that feat as a great advantage
even if they gain nothing by it, even if it swallows up their wealth and endangers their lives.
52.
Esprit de Corps
This neglect of their own interests, this renunciation of rest and safety, of personal affection and
private rancour, of pleasure and freedom, this submission to harsh discipline, this attachment to leaders
they have not chosen, and who wish them no good, the pride they feel at seeing themselves capable of
creating such havoc together, the astonishing power that reveals itself in them suddenly to hate a category of men, whole nations, and hate them on trust without ever having known or met them beforehand,
the absolute difference they manage to establish between themselves and beings with the same human
appearance, acting in the same way as themselves, between themselves and those opposite, this reversal
of natural instincts, human feelings and judgement are due to a strong passion that resembles love as
much as it resembles the opposite of love and which is called Esprit de Corps.
53.
Of Counterlove
No doubt Esprit de Corps brings together those who are of the same group, but it is not so much
common love as collective hostility. It is always a limited love with its reverse side of hatred. The Esprit
de Corps with which all the civic virtues are linked is a double-edged weapon like the lictors axe with
its bundle of sticks round the handle.
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Limited love casts a shadow of aversion and mistrust on everything that is not the beloved object.
The shadow side is even much more vast than the lighted object, for whereas the object loved is limited,
the aggressivity it gives rise to takes on universal proportions and pounces on anything and everything.
One should not therefore be surprised if love of the fatherland, for example, does not at all oblige the
man who professes it to show goodwill or kindness towards his compatriots but expressly obliges him
to make war on all the fatherlands enemies. This kind of love does not spring from the need for union,
but from the needs of defence and attack. In peacetime, fellow citizens, left to their own devices, exploit
and oppress each other in perfect tranquillity. Only under the pressure of imminent danger and of the
common enemy do they resort to sacred union. It is therefore an understatement to say that Esprit de
Corps is a limited love with its reverse side of hate: hate is uppermost.
54.
Passionate Love of Peace
Esprit de Corps is passionate love of the force of a group; not love of all, or of any one member of
the group, but love of the power of the group. Passionate love is a search for blind enjoyment or, failing
that, for obscure suffering ending in a jolt and excess that causes loss of conscience and obliviousness
of the limits of the person, carnal ocstasy and instinctive sacrifice. All amorous fury is jealous and
combative. Esprit de Corps is doubly so, being the concupiscence of common force. Now, it wants to
see the object of its desire naked, and common force strips itself bare in combat only. That is where
its lover really seizes it in his arms and thrusts himself into it. That is where Esprit de Corps reaches
fulfilment and sates itself. Just as coition is the end of carnal desire, war is the outlet for Esprit de Corps.
The act of killing or dying in battle is the carnal act of Esprit de Corps and man indeed achieves in it
obliviousness of his personal limits, loss of conscience at the height of vital exaltation.
55.
The Hypocritical Pride of Esprit de Corps
My country and my people: it is I and not I. It is I greatened by space, history, importance, power
and renown. To identify myself with it is enough to make me soar all at once above my mediocrity,
elated with delusion. My pride could have no more glorious occasion to give itself full vent than this
alias.
Therefore every nation owes itself to parade, dress itself up in plumes and perpetually sing its
own praises lest the powerful urge of pride weaken, Esprit de Corps and its subjects languish or take
themselves elsewhere. Prestige is more necessary to nations then are the earth and bread.
Just as jealousy (unlike charity) is set upon loving some object in opposition to all others and
becomes a cause of hatred, so pride (unlike dignity) exalts its object by contrast and comparison and
there is not so much self-esteem in it as contempt of others. If someone is not one of us, we feel a
pressing need to dazzle and crush him and we can show him no mercy so long as he does not confess
himself prostrate with admiration. But if he raises his crest and lets out his cockadoodledoo, the result
is a discourteous argument or a fight or a war, according to whether the scene takes place in a drawing
room, a cafe or a diplomatic conference.
Those who can see only economic or utilitarian reasons for war forget that the belly of the political
animal is not as hard to satisfy or has not such a capricious appetite as its vanity. Prick the citizens
vanity and you will obtain from him, for nothing, what he would never have done to save his fortune,
or for the sake of his children, or for the salvation of his soul.
All regimes, in consequence, diligently ply public vanity with the food of eloquence and the drink
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of grandiloquence through the medium of schools, the press, speeches, monuments, fire crackers, trumpets, flags, parades, commemorations and triumphal celebrations. This ought to be called the Civil Art,
just as the other is called the Military Art, for one is the left arm, the other the right arm of Power.
56.
The Systematic Ferocity of Esprit de Corps
No doubt it is a pity that we prefer ourselves to all others. It incites us to commit innumerable
abuses and wrongs. And it is a pity that we think ourselves preferable. But these are at least spontaneous
feelings concerned with a real object: ourselves, body and soul, products of nature and creatures of God.
But it is twice a pity to misplace these bad feelings instead of transcending them and to transfer them
to a ficticious object such as the social body, a mere creature of the intellect set up in the void and
breathing with imaginary breath. One would be mistaken in thinking that ferocity and conceit, in a
word, self-pride, when it overflows from the individual to extend to the great number and rise onto the
social plane, it thereby effaced, or that it undergoes a change of nature. On the contrary, it grows worse,
unchecked by any scruple, and behind a mask of honesty becomes more and more mischievous and
pernicious, finally possessing the heart and taking the place of conscience.
This collective pride traps us in truths that lead nowhere and arms us with two-edged virtues: military and justiciary zeal, enterprising and hardworking ambition, cold, calculated violence in the exercise
of power, the manoeuvring and severity reputed necessary to the common weal, in short, everything by
means of which countries are ruled while carnage loses nothing of its savage ferocity. For carnage has
not been done away with, but removed to other times ond other places, to the place and time of war
where it breaks loose again, valiantly and scientifically redoubled.
Our errors and sins can only spread evils limited to ourselves and to those around us, but the great
scourges that afflict the whole of humanity without our knowing to whom the fault can be attributed, are
not due to our sins, too weak and pitiable to cause such enormous catastrophes, but to our false virtues
and biassed truths, instruments of Esprit de Corps and its infernal powers.
Without doubt that is why Christ never tires of forgiving sinners but heaps curses on the heads of
the Scribes and Pharisees, that is to say, the pure, these who claim to be justified by the law.
It is why he refuses earthly kingdom, which would have turned him into a standard-bearer of Esprit
de Corps, why he refuses to undertake the liberation of Israel, expected of the Messiah announced; why
he refuses to become a national hero.
For the same reason, St. Paul speaks of the Law as being the condition of sin. Law is the Power
of Sin is his vigorous comment. All spiritual teachers point out that deliverance from sin lies, not in
application of the law or in the practice of public virtues and works of common utility, but in what St.
James calls the Law of Freedom, which is love.
57.
The Bestial Nature of Nations
Esprit de Corps is what animates the human group. The word animation here does not at all
apply to the soul (anima) but simply to animality. The great religions affirm that every man possesses
an immortal soul but they say nothing about the nature of a collection of men turned into a sovereignty
by accidents of History and the fortune of arms and alliances.
There are attempts to represent the collection of which we are members as a flourishing person with
a kindly face, crowned with oakleaves or laurel. Official speeches attribute to it all kinds of reasonable
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thoughts and noble feelings, but their insipid allegories and swollen rhetoric convince nobody. For
nobody expects a human group to express itself in a human way. It is when it shows its teeth and its
bestial appetite that its worshippers are transported by a rush of hot blood and are mystically ravished.
In their frenzy, they beat the tam-tam and do the scalp dance, in preparation for ritual sacrifice, massacre
and the immolation of the firstborn, for their god hungers after living flesh and thirsts for blood.
The savage for his part, knows that the tribe is a wild beast. He even knows exactly what kind of
animal incarnates the spirit of his ancestors and bears all the features of his racial character. It is the
Totem. He worships it in effigy and in nature. It is his father, his banner and his god. We still have our
Totems. Forever bristling, showing all their teeth and claws they survive in the coats of arms of families
and kingdoms, the genuine emblems of Esprit de Corps.
It must therefore be clearly seen and said that the nations are not human entities but something like
sacred crocodiles of monstrous size. Nevertheless, these beasts are fakes, put together like Moloch, the
furnace that devoured children.
58.
The Idols of Nations
As an animal, it is more powerful than I; as a statue, it is more brilliant that I; as a divinity, it is

more durable than I. I am happy to know that it needs me almost as much as I need it. By believing in
it, I give it life, by killing for it, I feed it, by dying for it, I ensure it immortality. Thus speaks the patriot
of his country and the heathen of his idol.
Idolatry is the worship of a limited, artificial and inferior god. The idol draws the worshipper out
of himself, but having limits, imprisons him instead of delivering him. The worshipper sacrifices living
victims to the idol because it poses as an immutable being from which he expects immortality, but it is
only a lifeless pretence. The blood of his victims will be on the head of the sacrificer and he will be
accountable for their death. The idol exalts the worshipper, but being of an inferior species, (animal
instead of spiritual) it can neither elevate nor enlighten him but only deprave and brutalize him.
Esprit de Corps has played a capital rle in the creation of mythologies and the foundation of
heathen cults, a rle scarcely examined by historians of religion who like to see the gods as mere
personifications of the forces of nature. They forget that Thunder, the Wind, Rain, the River, Wild
beasts, livestock, the Mountain, the Sea and the Tree all form tribes, kingdoms, empires and cities
exactly copied from ours and that the supreme heathen god is a king, just as the king of every heathen
nation is a god.
Today as yesterday, Esprit de Corps engenders sinister and bloodthirsty religions. But primitive,
barbarian idolatry should be distinguished from the decadent and vulgar kind; I mean the religions
which in our history preceded and knew nothing of the Christian Revelation should be distinguished
from those that fight Christianity in order to replace it by new gods: the Fatherland, the Race, Matter,
the Machine, Progress and other Baals.
The former are magical, prophetic and poetic and deal with images; the latter are logical, polemical
and political and deal with ideas. The former lead to the great cosmogonies of the Ancients, the latter,
to the dialectics of the New.
The former are graphing for the supernatural and the marvelous; the latter furiously deny reject the
Spirit.
The former, even when they go astray, are full of sap, of savour, of grandeur, of brilliance; the latter
bear the mark of stupidity, of ugliness and ignominy.
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In addition, the latter dress themselves up in hypocritical morality and pride themselves on their
philanthropy. One cannot be too suspicious of the asbtract, insipid and sublime appearance of their
divinities, for whom they have invented a denomination not to be found in sacred texts or in classic
language: the Ideal.
59.
Perverted Paganism
It is an adulterated paganism that has sprung up in Christian soil; it remains artificial and abortive.
Whence the embarassing rococo of official ceremonies and national solemnities: false Greek temples,
like the Chambre des Dputs: the French Stock Exchange; the everlasting sacred flame before the
altar of the Fatherland (homage by gas or paraffin) war monuments and their pious inscriptions, naked
female figures ecstatically brandished over public places, patriotic teats and victorious buttocks flying
amid the trumpets while the little soldier, his hand on his heart, dies reciting.
60.
The Four Possible Sovereignties

For the human group no fixed form is dictated by nature as for bees and ants.
Every man may belong in turn or at the same time, to several. There is the Family, the Nation, the
Social Class, the Church, the Party; there is school, the team, the regiment, the firm, the corporation, the
monastic order, the religious sect, the fashionable clique. All are worked on by Esprit de Corps which
aggregates or divides, makes of some brothers and friends, of others strangers and rivals. But Esprit de
Corps cannot bring to maturity its natural fruit, war, the legitimation of rapine and the glorification of
murder, unless the body of which it is the spirit has possessed itself of severeignty.
Throughout the course of history, four types of body have appropriated sovereignty; that is to say
right of peace, of war and justice. These are the Family or Tribe, the religious Sect, the Nation and
the Faction or Party.
Family and Nation resemble each other; their unity is founded on community of race and land.
Sect and Party resemble each other, established on community of belief and intention. (In these pages I
have spoken above all of the Nation because in our day it is in the Nation that Esprit de Corps manifests
itself with the greatest violence and insolence, whereas yesterday it did so in the Family and tomorrow
will perhaps do so in the Party).
The evolution of these forms, their interference, their combinations and the tragic conflict they give
rise to are the subject of the History of Civilisations.
God be thanked, there is a certain overlapping between the circles which imprison man and close
his horizon. They are not all concentric. Then the struggle begins between duties and interests and
this sometimes leads to inner conflict which make choice and deliverance possible. For within the
conscience there is always conflict between Esprit de Corps, which is counterlove (and which, along
with the Prince of this World, is already judged), and the spirit of Life, which is Charity, that is to say,
Grace.
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61.
The Purification of Esprit de Corps
To avoid patriotic idolatry without denying our natural feelings of affection or our duties of gratitude and justice, let us seek enlightenment by considering the ties that bind us to a group no longer
sovereign today, for example, our family.
Let us love our fatherland as we love our fathers home. Let us love it for its greatness if it is great,
and for its smallness if it is small. Let us dream of it when we travel, and long for it in exile. Let us
venerate the memory of our forefathers and try to leave our sons a heritage of honour.
We feel no pressing need to rip somebodys bowels out in order to defend that honour. Nor do
we think we have the right to lay hands on our neighbours flocks and belongings in order to increase
our patrimony. And none of our kin look upon us as traitors or deserters because of this conscientious
objection.
Yet the Family is a more natural, more sacred, more ancient and universal group than the Fatherland, which is neither the first nor the last concentric circle round man; no more than it is the most
carnal, or the most spiritual. Nevertheless, it is the least stable and the least necessary, and the gospel
does not even mention it, while some of the wisest and most saintly of men seem to have considered it
of no interest at all.
Montesquieu says (I am quoting from memory) If I knew of something that would profit me but
which would harm my family, I should forbid myself to think of it. If I knew of something useful to my
family but harmful to my country, I should reject it with horror. If I knew of something profitable to my
country but detrimental to other nations and to the human race, I should make it my duty to renounce
it. . .
Gandhi is the finest example of a patriot who, while serving and liberating his country, constantly
kept in mind the good of all men.
And his non-violence was not merely care to harm nobody, but effective and explicit concern to
help all.
62.
A Perverted Mystical Doctrine
Rousseau, who tries to found the whole of his political doctrine on Nature and Reason unintentionally gives a mystical turn to the General Sovereignty which he claims to be a New Entity, distinct
from the will of each of its contractors and which voting would determine by interrogating it as if it were
an oracle. This is in perfect conformity with heathen orthodoxy, but he seems not to know it. Voting,
at least in the Aristocracy, (and in the Democracy, casting lots) was carried out in the same spirit as
consultation of the Augurs, and this was no doubt less simpleminded than to think it an expression of
the peoples will.
This General Will, according to Rousseau, would necessarily be just and infallible. Indeed, he says
somewhere that It is the voice of God.
It should be noted at the outset that this General Will is never anything more than that of a particular
City and although collective, it remains none the less particular.
I would go so far as to say that it is more particular than the will of a single man. The One God is
alone Universal, and man possesses something of His universality because, up to a certain point, he is
one and unique like Him, conscious and mysteriously alive like Him, so that he can communicate with
God and serve as a channel for the Will of the Most High.
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No such thing is possible to the Moral Body composed of as many members as to Assembly has
voices which can express nothing but some statistical average between exterior, unequal and opposed
desires.
In his last chapter, Rousseau clearly perceives the connection betweeen heathen religion and the
civic virtues of the Romans and Greeks, and he puts the question whether the Christian religion is
favourable to social weal. His answer is contradictory and in the end negative.
We prefer to put the question the other way round: what, we wonder is the social form that might
be favourable to true Religion? And our answer is: the simplest, the first and the only natural one: the
Tribe.
The people of Israel is the chosen people because, alone among the nations, it has remained a
tribe.
But it has not, like other tribes, linked its fate with a wolf or an eagle or a man-god, but with
the Creator of Heaven and Earth, with He-Who-Is.
This people is acquainted with no other social contract than what is contained in the Ark of the
Covenant, with no other law than a Patriarch, a Prophet, a Judge, a Sage and an Inspired Man and even
under Tiberius it cries We will have no other King than Jehovah.
Again: in the Bible I see the confession of a people and I admire its avowal of infamy and abomination. How far this is from the heroics of Esprit de Corps! God alone is the power and the glory and
the hope of Israel.
Is it surprising, then, that for all its exceptional vitality and gifts, this people has never been able
to establish earthly dominion of any importance or for any length of time? It is for the same reason,
that for 2000 years Christianity has been seeking in vain, a civil form fitting for it. Perhaps more than
anywhere else, it is among the facilities of the Liberal Regime that Christianity is most ill at ease.
Between the turn of mind of the Highlycivilized, that flower of the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil,
and the spirit of the gospel, there yawns a gulf so great that an understanding between them can be
reached only through misunderstanding.
Nietzsche describes the Highlycivilized thus: We have invented happiness say the latest men.
And they wink.
63.
The Game of Equality and Liberty, or the social scrum

LIBERTY
EQUALITY
FRATERNITY
Reads the inscription on the public buildings, the barracks and the prisons of France. Really? or
RIVALRY
VENALITY
VULGARITY ?
Equality does not exist in a tribe, no more than does inequality. Each has his place in it marked
by birthright which does not lend itself to discussion, pretention or jealousy and ensures that each fits
into the whole organically and that life or the exchange of services flows freely between members who
are not interchangeable. Where there is no attempt to out-do each other there is no need for equality or
inequality. To succeed is to fill ones place and to grow in ones being, not to change ones situation.
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In the City, every post is offered, every career open to all. Each thinks he can become bigger by
gaining a higher position while at every minute he risks losing his own, coveted by others. Uneasiness
and anxiety are forever by his side, his happiness is always elsewhere and for tomorrow.
Like the draught in a furnace, the general aspiration of below to above creates suction that makes
the city roar.Thanks to this hellfire everything works and rotates, and wealth and speed increase.
As for the successful, one cannot tell whether they have been caught up like sparks in a whirlwind
or whether by working desperately or by a stroke of genius, they have not set the whirlwind in motion.
Besides, the sucessful are so only in other mens eyes, and if they feel themselves successful, then
they are seeing themselves with other mens eyes. Within themselves, they have remained what they
are, soot and ashes. The height to which they have been transported has not added an inch to their
stature, the urge they underwent has left on them no mark of freedom or greatness. Social happiness
is illusory and conventional. But they almost do not perceive their disappointment for they find relief
from it in the incessant entertainment that prevents them from thinking of their lot.
The successful are so only to the detriment of others. What fans up their flame is rivalry. No-one
can grow rich without depriving someone, no-one can dominate without subjecting several. The social
climb consists in pulling the feet of the man above, and, once he is down, in mounting on his shoulders
and his head.
There is no malice in it it is the game. Above all, it is a necessity. For whoever does not pull
down is pulled down and whoever does not climb loses his foothold.
Thus aspiration to the top is counter-balanced by a movement of descent and downfall. The vanquished and their wreckage find themselves at the bottom crawling in the sluggish swarm of those who
could not seize their chance. To tell the truth, there are many runners to a single prizewinner. That
Wealth and Power belong to a few and that the greatest number has its place lowest down is a social law
as clearly demonstrated as the fall of heavy bodies in Physics.
The equality of citizens does not exist at the beginning or at the end or at the moment of any regime
however popular it may be or may claim to be.
Social equality remains fictitious, abstract and virtual. The only equality possible is equal accession
to height, but height implies inequality.
To do away with inequalities of structure would be to flatten everything and to reduce it to inertia.
Equality of treatment and of respect at all levels is conceivable and seems equitable and good. But
in no regime does it exist, and the so-called peoples democracies are far from having achieved it.
Nevertheless, in some small countries of highly bourgeois or aristocratic tradition, like Switzerland or
Sweden, there are glimpses of what such a paradise of civility might be.
Be that as it may, a living city without inequality is just as impossible as a waterfall on flat ground.
And the social scrum is inevitable: it enlists all against all, willy-nilly. Whoever tries to stay out
of the scrum or on top of it is knocked down and trampled underfoot. Whoever will not fight is beaten
beforehand. Vagrancy is inscribed in the French Penal Code as an offence. In Shakespeares time, all
tramps were condemned by the Sheriff to be beaten and, if they repeated the offence, to be hanged.
The law of the City allows no one to be free in his own way. He must be so in an aggressive and
civic manner. It works out for everybody in the end, for the climb is profitable and the fall makes the
wheel of business rotate. The rotation of the wheel makes the social machine produce, and something
of the product benefits all to some degree. Even the victims of the turn of the wheel.
This rush after fortune, this hand-to-hand fight is the spring of Progress which spreads the dew of
well-being far and wide. Even ruin and bankruptcy contribute to it by giving an opening to active new
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forces. Fear of downfall keeps alert those who are not whipped on by ambition. More effective than the
slavedrivers whip, more effective than the inspectors eye is the presence of a competitor. Finally, the
pressure which becomes more and more unbearable as one sinks nearer the bottom keeps the cowardly
and the lazy from settling there. Hunger, cold, and shame drag out from their retreat the lowest of the
low, force them to work and drive them to gain.
The more the friction and the clashes multiply, the greater the animation and the pressure, and the
jet of life springs up harder and straighter.
And in the City where every citizen looks upon every other as a prey or an obstacle, where each
grabs for himself and punches his neighbour, trips him up, laughs at his fall and drinks to his ruin, it
happens that in this way they do one another more good than if they tried to be charitable for the sake
of heaven.
It goes without saying that the good obtained in this way because of such behaviour remains foreign
to all that is inward and spiritual. It is a counterfeit, of the kind produced by the Knowledge-of-Goodand-Evil.
64.
The Social Scrum mechanized
It is precisely the so-called benefits of civilization which develop to the detriment of human
beings rather than for their improvement.
The City is a great consumer of human values. It mixes, grinds and destroys distinctions and
dignities and gradually reduces nations to masses.
A Nation has a face and a sense. It has a head with which nature has endowed it, a heart, a body
and a form which has been shaped from within. But a mass is a heavy, shapeless thing, a flabby dough
that slides over and downward.
The triumph of the masses has been announced for tomorrow. Their turbulent invasion has already
begun. It is also taking place within man. Mindlessness is gaining on him; his heart has become watery,
opinions throng and riot in his feverish head, the impulses of the moment, mounting from his entrails,
take precedence over all faith and every law.
Inner corruption and outer rivalry would make the whole thing explode if an adjustment had not
been instituted to transform these explosive forces into the driving power of the City. This is wrongly
named organization.
Wrongly because the word organ implies the invisible life of interdependent parts, whereas in this
case, the parts are put together: in other words we are dealing with a mechanisation.
Wherever the spirit of the tribe is dominant, the Sacred reigns over all the rest, Tradition and
Religion rule and relate everyting. The head directs, the heart counsels and urges forward, the instincts
follow, submissive. There is then some reason to take the Fatherland for a god.
According to Herodotus, the Egyptians divided History into three ages: that of the gods, that of the
heroes, that of men. The direction they gave to Progress is thus clear.
In that direction, we have surpassed them, for here we are in a Fourth Age, that of Machines.
Let the worshippers of the machine contemplate the most formidable machine of all: the State.
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65.
The Game of Licence and Necessity, or Decadence
Remarkable, this: that the machine for grinding men is of the same substance as what it grinds.
The cogwheels, the chains, the pivots of steel, are man, and so is the pulp obtained.
Man also is the clay mixed with iron of which the feet of Daniels Colossus are made (Dan. II, 32).
The images head was of fine gold, the reign of the gods his breast and his arms of silver, the reign of
heroes his belly and his thighs of brass, the reign of men his legs of iron, the reign of struggle, necessity
and mechanics his feet part of iron and part of clay, a mixture of softness and hardness, weaker than
pure clay, the reign of the mass, the collapse of tradition and the end of history.
Here there are no longer any men of Strength as in the reign of heroes, nor are any Gentle as in the
Kingdom of Heaven: there are only the Soft and the Hard.
The Hard become the automats and the parts of the Great Machine. The Soft are he pulp called the
Mass.
Every man has part of both: hard outwardly in his technical and civic acts, stiff and strict in the arts
and sciences of utility, limp and deliquescent in mind and heart.
And the regime that ensues is, turn and turn about, the policy of words, words, words, scheming,
financial, legal or criminal scandal and the croaking of the frogs in the pond - and the sudden arrival of
the heron, the one everyone was wishing for. He makes a clean sweep. Wordy disorder is followed by
blind submission. Constrained silence takes the place of speechmaking and substitutes for agreement.
The mechanism is fixed up and functions again. The police and the army are the instruments of reform
and the model for a society that works. Everything goes splendidly until the great military catastrophe.
The Dictator is no Knight Errant. He has nothing of the legendary hero. He is a bit of crowd drawn
by lot out of millions, a product of necessity and chance.
To necessity he lends a face and a name, which pleases the crowd, but is not necessary.
For necessity reigns just as well without a face or a name. She holds each of her subjects by the
tail of his coat, buttonholes him, sticks a feather in his hat or knocks it off, clips his moustache or twists
it upward, tells him when to get up, chooses and measures out his fodder, his reading matter and his
entertainment, sticks a stool on his behind or dispatches him to the worksite or the battlefield or into
the square where everybody is yelling and tells him what to yell. Thus he is hardened by facility, by the
heaviness and flabbiness of his mass.
66.
The Mechanical Laws of Conquest
If I were asked, concerning the greatest and most powerful of cities, the one that filled the world
with its renown and its monuments, if I were asked what sort of machine Rome was, I should answer, a
lift and force pump.
A pump for conquest, of which the sucker is the agitation of the Plebs and Social Revolution.
The rise of the Proletatiat is what lifts and makes the vacuum, the reaction is what forces out.
Revolt and war swing into each other to make the fountain of blood spout.
The rich man says to the Poor man, Why are you trying to take what I have? Dont you see that
I have the law, the means, and public force on my side? After all, arent we brothers and sons of the
same mother-country? Why dont you go for the wicked barbarians over there? Go and take what they
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have, or rather, come with me and take it; Ill lend you a hand. I love risk and glory and I want to show
you that we are brothers. If you attack me, youll be broken and disgraced. But if you help me to beat
the neighbour, our enemy, youll have the support of common force, youll be justified by faith, youll
be glorified whether you fall or whether you come back a conquering hero.
The poor say, What can we get out of work? Just enough to begin working again next day, a
lot scarcely better than a slaves and sometimes more precarious. Work enslaves men; war ennobles
then, opens up new horizons and opportunities. A man goes off barefoot and comes back on horseback.
Whatever happens, he has a meal every day and pay as well; in short, it spells security. Thus they go to
their death. And then, we shall be told what to do and so we shall be spared uncertainty. Thus they
become the prisoners of death.
The campaign over, the rich seize most of the spoil and become richer. The poor come back poor,
if they come back. They have at least gained being fewer: they have acquired rights. The same question
arises; once again the same issue presents itself. But half of the poor, the half that are armed, have been
so well trained in obedience that they are ready to march against the other half.
Therefore all conquering nations keep in their bosoms a wretched and turbulent crowd. In Rome,
Queen of the World, they swarmed on its pavements, in Spain mistress of the West Indies, they swarmed
in its dust, in Imperial Victorian London they swarmed in its soot.
The vanquished, then, are easily seen, for atrocious is the fire roaring in captured cities, atrocious
the profanation of temples and women, atrocious the deportation and extermination of whole peoples.
The vanquished are easily seen, but where are the victors?
It is characteristic of mechanical movement to have no direction and to be unable to stop when
there is no more reason for it.
Rome conquered the world, she consumed and emptied herself in one of those reverse sacrifices to
which biters of the Fruit dedicate themselves and become their own devourers.
For it was not only Greece taken that ended by taking her, according to the classic saying, but
fortune-hunters of every race and colour from Africa or Pannonia or Lydia or Brittany who invaded her,
while frome Judea destroyed and dispersed, her definitive Dominator was to come. The last Latin of
pure stock had fallen on distant frontiers.
And finally the time came when Rome, who had conquered the world with her army (reinforced
by numerous auxiliary barbarian troops), found herself conquered by that army. For the Empire is just
that: the Army and its Chief turning against the metropolis to install themselves there as in conquered
country.
Compared with the raids of the Huns, wo burnt cities for the sole reason that they did not know
what else to do with them, and who invaded without occupying because they needed space to gallop
in, the Roman Conquest seems constructive, a work of civilization and even, as she flattered herself, of
peace.
But what is it worth to conquer the world when one thereby loses ones own soul? Rome, the conquered conqueror, already, at the height of her greatness, hollow and lost was nothing but a whirlwind,
a hole in emptiness, a vanity of vanities.
67.
The End of the Story

And here we are faced with a truth of Testimony and of the Testament.
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That he who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.
That he who leads into captivity will be led into captivity.
That it is the Prince of this World who possesses all these Kingdoms and gives them to whom he
pleases.
Lastly, that the Prince of this World is already judged.
68.
The City and War
All the Cities of Greece, as well as Rome, and even all the free cities of Mediaeval Italy were
hotbeds of bloody faction and merciless war. To such a degree that Vico derives the word polemos ( =
war ) from polis ( = city ).
The fact that war seems to be a natural function of Civilisation is due to the artificial character of
the city, which is an excessive group founded on wrongdoing, whereas Kingdoms are natural but forced
groups.
And war is attached to Kingdom as the normal result of an abnormality.
War and other scourges are signs that Civilizations are daughters of The Sin.
Justifications of war are impeccable and implacable, as are all the theorems of the Science-ofGood-and-Evil.
69.
The Nature of Tyranny
We defined the Patriarchate as a free and natural group, the Kingdom as a forced natural group, the
City as a free artificial group.
There remains a fourth regime to consider, one both artificial and forced, by name:
Tyranny.
It must of necessity take last place says Aristotle, for it is the worst of Governments (Polit. IV,
2). For it is the corruption of the best of good ones, Monarchy, which is the image of the Celestial
Hierarchies (IV, 2).
But Tyranny has no relation to Royalty. It is not a corruption of it: it is not a Kings bad government,
despotic and arbitrary as so many have been no more than an ass is a bad horse or a monkey a wicked
man.
Historically and by nature, Tyranny is something quite other: it is democratic by nature. It is the
corruption of Democracy, its decadence and end.
70.
The Time of the Tyrant

When, after so much struggle for equality, things amount to an outrage of democracy (Polit. IV,
13),
When number predominates over value and riches, and dishonesty and impudence over merit,
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When the multitude becomes a thousandheaded despot (IV, 4) manoeuvred by the flattery of the
mediocre (since like all despots it loves flattery),
When the party in power looks upon the Government as the reward of its victory (IV, 11) and
turns it into an instrument for the oppression of its adversaries,
When, thanks to disorder and discord, to change and inconsequence, everybody is beginning to tire
of freedom,
Then Agathocles invites all the senators of Syracuse to a feast, and having regaled them, has them
strangled by his thugs and seizes power, acclaimed by the crowd.
71.
The Coup dEtat, theme and variations
It is the classic theme of the Coup dEtat. It can also be celebrated in some other manner. The feast
may be saved. One can operate at the victims home, poison him or throw him out of the window, force
him to commit suicide or hang him at the street corner, post up a list of the outlawed, put a price on
their heads or, better still, have recourse to plebiscites, trials of traitors and other proceedings which are
not only legal but also provide the public with entertainment.
72.
Connivance between the Tyrant and the People
The tyrant is not always of popular extraction. Several of the most famous belong to the privileged
class38 and on occasion prevail themselves of their origin as an arm against it and as an ornament to be
shown off or coyly hidden.
But all, descendants of Venus or sons of clodhoppers, know how to devise an image that sets the
female crowd dreaming; know how to invent the gesture that makes the gaper guffaw, know how to coin
the phrase that sets fire to the tow of the vulgar.
It is always to the multitude that the Tyrant makes his appeal over the heads of the nobles, the rich,
the priests, the educated, the capable including his courtiers, his followers and his ministers. They are
the footstool on which he climbs to speak to the crowd.
When Caligula nominates his horse senator and goes to bed with the wife of a high dignitary,
forcing him to watch his antics, he is dealing out to the mob largesse more enjoyable than a distribution
of wheat.
Then there are the theatres, games, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beastes, medals, tableaux
and other such drysaltery. . .
. . . I see not now any man who, having heard speak of Nero, doth not tremble at that filthy beaste.
It may be said that after his death, as vile as was his life, the noble Roman people did receive such
displeasure from the memory of his games and feastes that they did well-nigh mourn39 .
38
Caesar was of high nobility, extravagant with studied nonchalance; Robespierre of good bourgeois origin, ostentatiously
distinguished; Napoleon of lesser, but authentic and ancient nobility; Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, at one time students and
seminarists, were bourgeois intellectuals.
39
La Boetie. Voluntary Slavery.
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73.
Orgies and Licence of the Tyrant
But the spectacle which, more than a farce or an immolation, satisfies the mob, solaces, consoles
and avenges it, is the spectacle of the Law flouted and trampled underfoot by the supreme master of
the Law; it is the sight of a Policeman, or a Magistrate or the Great Pontiff, the sight of all those who
for centuries have commanded, moralized, preached and presided; of all those who extort money and
bowing and scraping, being clubbed as in a Punch-an-Judy show.
Thus does the tyrant prolong and complete our revolution, for we liberate ourselves in this perpetual, gigantic saturnalia.
74.
Tyrannys Loss of Savour
Our epoch, preoccupied with economy and efficacity in all things, has created a new type of tyrant,
the prudish tyrant.
Nowadays, he presents himself decently buttoned up, patting the cheeks of the little girl who
presents him with the bunch of flowers.
Even South America has forgotten its Quirogas and its Rosass, irresistible cavaliers with the rose of
death stuck in their hats, forgotten their explosive obscenity and their ferocious farces. In the elementary
schoolbooks of Argentina, Peron is a paragon of conjugal virtue and distributive justice. Only after his
sudden departure was the telephone of solid gold discovered, plus the two hundred pairs of boots of the
Defender of the Shirtless, and the harem organized at the Girls High School by Evitas inconsolable
widower.
The great comedy-show presented by Mussolini stuck to the most banal morality. In public he
practiced the art of being a grandfather and nothing would have been known of his little amours if death
had not exposed them for sale.
Salazar lives with his mother and takes the tram every morning to go to the office.
Franco is a devout general with not a hair out of place.
Lenin is an old fellow with no private life and no time to brush his grey jacket.
Trotsky has the eyeglasses of a meticulous little employee.
Hitler of the clipped bristle is abstinent and continent and the sight of blood makes him feel sick.
Tito spends Sundays gardening and his wife calls him in to beat the omelette.
Stalin has two cloaks and eats with his family in the kitchen when there is no reception at the
Kremlin. The invasion surprised him angling on the lake.
One may well wonder what can have brought about such a deterioration of the tyrant who used to
be a Centaur, a Satyr or a Cyclops40 .
But it is not the tyrant that has changed: it is the the Mass. The tyrant will always be what the Mass
wants it to be. Now, the Mass of today is no longer made up of tramps, cadgers, jacks of all trades,
vagabonds, beggars, picklocks, rascals, knaves and rogues, but of niggling, peevish savers who, once
the spasms of the Great Eve are over, dream only of wellbeing and security in the Definitive Antheap.
40
There is one exception, an amateur, it is true, a fancy tyrant of brief reign: Gabriele dAnnunzio who amused himself at
Fiume in quite a preposterous manner. But he had mistaken his century; he thought himself in the XIVth.
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75.
Dictatorship and Empire

Tyranny may be civil or military.
Civil Tyranny = Dictatorship.
Military Tyranny = Empire.
Dictator does not mean tyrant, or emperor either. Dictator means Plenipotentiary, Minister invested with full power. The Roman Republic in its prime, named a Dictator for a brief mandate to
deal with some crisis. Therefore Dictator is the name given to the Civil Tyrant who elects and imposes
himself under cover of a plot or a disturbance. Likewise, Emperor does not mean Sovereign, but merely
General. The name is then given to the general who has been victorious, not over an enemy nation, but
over the one that entrusted him with its armies.
This chief is more fit than any other to put an end to democratic croaking. His speeches are commands, not dissertations. He is accustomed to cutting men up into rows and squares and to dispatching
business to the tattoo of the drum. He has won the attachment of his troops to his person and made
partisans of his soldiers. All that remains to do is to turn the citizens into soldiers and put them all
into step. Off to the dungeon or the scaffold with the unmanageable, with shirkers, deserters, arguers,
traitors, critics, milkshop and middle-coursers.
Brass bands, marches and parades make the nation feel strong. There-in lies more than half its
strength, for the decent citizen asks no more than to side with the strongeest and even if he were
mistaken, the mistake would strengthen the man of his choice.
Even under enemy fire, every army builds bridges, throws up earth works, digs ditches, raises or
demolishes walls by night as by day. And now the ancient quarters of the city crumble as wide avenues
sweep through them and monumental perspective reveals the magnificence and solidity of the new order.
The cost is insanely high, but the Chief, always generous with other peoples possessions, disdains
such preoccupations and treats gold like grapeshot.
The experts are unanimous in murmuring that tomorrow morning will bring bankruptcy. In fact,
they point out, already during the last days of the Republic, when the burning question was economy
and how to balance the budget, ruin was imminent. And now, all at once, all we do is spend, spend,
spend.
But the experts are wrong as sometimes happens for the expenditure is like a draught to a
stove, and as soon as the expense draws, finance begins to crackle and roar. One lends only to the rich,
only the rich can spend. Thus does the fool reason. He trusts, and his trust creates credit, credit creates
wealth and wealth proves the fool right.
War is the major ressource and the supreme purpose of Empire. The people are more and more
wrought upon by wretchedness and the pressure and flux of events that motivate conquest. The forces
of revolt and despair find no outlet except in the army.
Only there can one escape being crushed and share in strength and expansion.
The Chief need only choose the right moment and the right enemy. Within his grasp, well in hand,
he holds not only an army that belongs to the nation, but a whole nation that belongs to, and serves his
army.
And who wins battles? Soldiers of course, but above all, these who forge weapons for them and
provide for their needs. In a country at war, there is not a man, woman, child or an aged person not at
war.
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And the cost increases out of all proportion, and the experts wait for their revenge, but in vain,
for the cost is an illusion. State money increases production, which increases the ressources, which
increases the taxes that make money flow back into the coffers of the State.
Then come the scenes of triumph and glorification and the good people who provide the entertainment and pay to applaud it shout, What Glory is like Caesars?
Now does the legend of heroic times enter the present of History; the gods and the kings have
returned. And the soldier of fortune around whom all this swirls and rushes like a torrent, begins to
dream of consecration for all the centuries to come, of descendants forever enthroned. And the two
extremes, Royalty and Tyranny, join in the person of the Emperor crowned and consecrated.
But what can this mighty one, who owes nothing to his fathers, what can this mighty one do for
his sons? The Pretorian Guard dislikes beardless princes, and dislikes even more the interference of
children, regent grand-mothers, eunuchs and nurses between them and their presumptive sovereign.
They will therefore choose one who is ready to rule, then invade the Palace entrusted to their keeping,
set up their man, acclaim him and wait for the promised distribution.
Every generation or very nearly so Tyranny seizes its rights, of which the peculiar character
is usurpation.
The descendants of a Dictator or Civil Tyrant have even less likelihood of inheritance. The dictator
can do anything except change the nature of his power or command recognition of a king who has no
sword and no ancestors.
Aristotle says that tyrannies do not last long. That is true, but they recur intermittently as often as a
nation has lost its resistance and its nobility. When they are renewed continuously, the result is Empire,
whether its name is Empire or Peoples Democracy.
76.
The Four Regimes

Patriarchate is the union of Love and Fear.
Royalty, of Fear and Reason.
The Republic, a game between Reason and Covetousness.
Tyranny, a struggle between fear and a bigger Fear.
77.
The Force of Law and the Law of Force
The title of Emperor is improperly applied to a King whose vassals are other Kings or federated
royalties who have elected him their Chief. This was the case of the Holy Western Empire which
claimed to be heir to the Holy Roman Empire, quite wrongly and quite in vain, since it was of quite
another nature and superior. Empires of this order should be put under the heading of Royalty.
A Prince who usurps a traditional throne cannot be regarded as a tyrant, for he does not necessarily
set up tyranny, but becomes king himself. Tyranny is not simply the act of a man who usurps (and
once he is on the throne the act is over and done with). It is the establishment of a regime in itself a
usurpation.
The replacement of a regime of Law by a regime of Force and Fortune.
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78.
The Mechanics of Tyranny
Whoever has received Legal Power is the servant of the Law for the good of all. Even so, it often
happens that he misuses the law and sets up as a Despot.
This has been the case at all times in Asia, not that the Oriental is more cowardly or more servile
than others, but because he is more religious and gives its full meaning to Divine Law, seeing the
Sovereign as a god or as Gods chosen one. This being so, honour and faith require him to bear with
courage everything the Sovereign may inflict on him, for there-in consists his trial and he will acquire
merit by resisting all temptation to revolt.
But the Tyrant is no servant of the law, for he thinks he owes his success to his own strength and
boldness. He has seized power with the intention of putting power and the Law to his own use.
The Law serves to bind all but himself. In consequence, all are his prisoners and he can lead them
where he will and treat them as he pleases.
He uses the law against all, and men one against another.
If all agreed, the tyrant would lose his hold. For this reason every association is suspect in his eyes,
in every friedship a plot is latent and complicity probable.
Unlike the King, who incarnates the unity of a nation, the Tyrant is a systematic instigator of
division, dissension, mistrust, reciprocal delation, and perpetual fear. His sentences, passed without
warning or inquiry and executed without appeal or delay, are the claws with which he clutches.
His men, those who have put him into power to share the gain, serve and flatter him for goods and
honours. But what good can a man have when even his face is not his own, nor even the use of his
limbs? He knows the trouble he takes, everyone knows the trouble he makes, but the good he gets out
of it is apparent to no-one.
The wretched creature has to put up with the whims, the suspicion and the outrages of his master,
head bowed and mouth shut. Nevertheless, he must needs find a way of avenging his honour, and giving
vent to his feelings. Not against the tyrant, of course, for he cannot do anything to the potentate. But he
will take his revenge on the first person to come within reach of his hand or his foot, on someone who
cannot defend himself and who has done nothing to deserve punishment. This victim will then relieve
his feelings on the first person he meets and the offence will go on being dealt out downwards until it
reaches the last, whose only recourse will be to beat his dog.
In the Tyrants country, every one is arrogant and brutal toward the weak, and equally cringing
toward those from whom he fears or hopes for something. This is the contrary of natural revenge, the
contrary of justice, the contrary of the dignity of revolt.
To take revenge is to render as much harm as one can to ones harmer. But if we misaim and harm
someone else, then we are doubly grieved.
Ordinary justice consists in applying reason to revenge and limiting it to the rendering of equal
harm that fear may prevent further harm.
To spare the guilty and harm the innocent is a double breach of honour.
As for courageous revolt, revolution for the sake of justice, it is the contrary of this top to bottom
chain of discord. It is an upward thrust; each attacks his superior and counts on his inferiors as troops
to be led to on-slaught. But a contrary engenders its contrary and the natural end of the tyrant is the
dagger or the rope.
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79.
Ills and Remedies of all Regimes
On the subject of tyranny, the best minds have spoken all the evil that can be spoken. To add
anything is impossible, and to repeat, useless.
All power implies the power to use it wrongly. The strongest and best the best of the good
Monarchy, is the one that best lends itself to misuse.
The Republic is open to misuse when an extreme party dominates or when it has lapsed into inefficiency.
Even the patriarchal regime is open to misuse when greed or anger make their entry.
No regime is so good that mans mischief cannot make it worse than the worst. None is so bad that
kindness cannot overcome all its faults.
Some tyrants were the flower of their century, like Pericles or Lawrence the Magnificent. Some
were of high virtue: for example, Cola di Rienzo, Savonarola and Cromwell.
80.
Regimes and Ages
Solon, when asked whether he had given the Athenians the best laws possible, answered that he
had given them the best they could bear.
Aristotle points out that a given regime, better in itself, is not necessarily the best for a given people.
This is not just a question of national character; almost all nations have experienced the four regimes
turn and turn about. It depends on which season has been reached in its social cycle.
Just as there are four ages in life, there are four reigns.
The Patriarchate is the infancy of nations: the Matriarchate possibly their prenatal state in the age
of Cave-dwellers.
Royalty is the youth of nations; feudal strife, the difficulties of puberty.
Absolute Monarchy, the prime of life; Moderate Monarchy, the approach to maturity. The Republic
is the age of business, worry and fatigue. Tyranny has all the characteristics of senility.
These remarks should be taken with reserve. The comparison of a social body to a living being is
always imperfect. Artifice, imitation, pretension and falsification play a considerable part in the social
being. There are interferences and deviations. The evolution of a nation may be broken by an invasion
or an expansion or by the preponderant influence of a neighbour. Another may pass from barbarity
to decadence without experiencing maturity. It is true that it is the case of many men to emerge from
puerility only to fall into senility, without ever having been men.
Nobody takes winter for the time of nightingales and cherries. Old age is the time of bodily
ailments, greed, hardening, softening, obstinacy, repetitious drivel, cranky habits and horror at the
approach of death. But sometimes it is like a sunset or snowfall in a dale.
There are people who cultivate a philosophical craze, an aesthetes obstinacy or political passion
for some form of government which they believe to be the only one possible. They are sincere, and there
is some truth in what they say, but their efforts remain sterile, sometimes ridiculous and sometimes
pernicious because out of season.
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81.
Courageous and Circumspect Acceptance
There are regimes which will be founded no matter what wo do, simply because their hour has
come and it is in the nature of things.
If we know the nature of things we can foresee them and thus avoid illusion or temptation with
regard to them. We can situate them, gauge them and take our distance.
We shall let Cato open his veins because he does not want to outlive the Republic, and Brutus kill
his father to save freedom already dead, but let us not give the name of virtue to vain crime and blind
folly.
It is neither reasonable nor wholly courageous to refuse the regime that will be, even if it must be
called tyranny and we have good reasons for hating the word. It is not a regime neither this one nor
another that will set us free, it is not a set of conditions and laws that spells freedom, but we who
should be free. What ever the conditions, laws or regime, we shall most certainly have to free ourselves
from them and from the world itself (which does not mean that we must kill ourselves or set ourselves
apart.)
What is quite ignoble is to try to guess what the next regime will be (the reign of money in the
hands of a few, or the dictature of the proletariat) in order to bet on the winning horse.
What is completely stupid is to see some regime that is not ours as a bargain-price heaven or a hell.
82.
The Wheel comes full Cycle
Considering that throughout history the Tyrant has set himself up as the idol of the Great Number,
it is not difficult to foresee that the day the Great number sets up a regime of its choice, that regime will
be the tyrants.
In spite of the explanations we are given, this is done, and this is so, not by accident or as a
transitory measure but because it constitutes the very framework of the system and is required by its
logic.
And here we are, back again at Revolution and Tyranny, the point of departure of this chapter. Our
reflection has come full cycle, it is time to stop.
Has it been vain to go round in a circle?
Yes, if you who are reading see it only as a round of clever views and not of the urgent and
tremendous questions set to us by the Present.
83.
Concerning the Laws and Fatality of History
As an appendix to this chapter and an introduction to the next, there follows the text of an occasional
talk given a long time ago but still timely.
In the autumn of 1944, my people met, at my invitation, in the spinners workshop at La Vigne
St. Paul. I talked to them of the events which had kept us apart since the spring: the landing of the
allied forces, the liberation of Paris, the war which was still going on, but still ending, won beforehand.
Shouts of rejoicing and victory filled the beflagged streets.
A page of history has been written since our last meeting. Here we are at a turning-point in history.
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One of these points from which one sees clearly what lies ahead. We see clearly now. We see clearly
that everything is as confused as it was yesterday.
The country has been freed. How we have longed for this deliverance during these last four years
of shame and oppression. The traces of the invaders arrogance have been wiped out everywhere.
The hateful police and military dictatorship of the National-Socialist Regime is going to collapse
everywhere in the world. The regime that will replace it will, on the contrary, be national. It will
certainly also be socialist. It will have to be military. It will necessarily be a police regime.
If liberal regimes will oppose force to regimes of force, they must in their turn reinforce themselves
and to the same extent reduce the freedom which is their raison dtre. At the limit, the word liberal
comes to be nothing but a word. Indeed, what happens is that through fighting each other, opposed
regimes end up by opposing each other like two peas.
It was because of the states hold on private enterprise, because of the centralization, mechanization
and mobilization of all the power and resources in the country, because of what is distinctively proper
to the communist system that the Fascists opposed the Soviets.
It was because of the exaltation of patriotism, which is the mark of Fascism, that the Germans
unjustly invaded Russia. It was because of the same exaltation stirred up among the Russians, in perfect
opposition to the principles of the Third International that the Soviet troops felt the surge of passion
required to drive out the Germans and invade neighbouring territory.
It was from the OGPU that the Gestapo learnt its method of delation and torture. It is from the
Gestapo that our police are learning theirs.
In the scientific technique of lying called Propaganda, every party competes with the others and it
is impossible to say which is best at it.
The same people who, in 1914 and 1939, screamed with indignation on hearing of the bombardment of an open city or the massacre of an unarmed population now learn every morning that German
cities are being killed by burning and suffocation, that hospitals and cathedrals are being reduced to
rubble, and they artlessly rejoice.
What I mean is that the most inhuman customs, the most detestable mental habits, automatically
pass from one regime to another, that contamination takes place in combat and that the one has only to
overcome the other to cease being preferable.
Those who think that there is something to be said for the unleashing of violence, because it settles
disputes and clears the air, are greatly mistaken. To begin with, the word unleash is deceptive, for what
takes place is an enchainment: injustice entails vengeance, the victory of the one entails the revenge of
the other, violence engenders violence in a tit-for-tat that becomes more and more heated.
For a century and a half, wars have brought revolution in their train and the damage has become
more and more devastating. The fact is that in this profoundly just world, effects follow their causes
impeccably. For as long as men have found no better means of affirming themselves than excess checked
only by the excess of others, the tides of blood will flow with the regularity of a natural law. Whoever
believes that to accumulate murder and destruction is the only way to establish justice and peace has a
wrong idea of the justice of the Almighty. And reality takes care to correct him every time.
Have you noticed that in revolution and in war the result is always disappointing to those who
planned and carried them into execution? But this is not the main discovery, for it is natural that facts
should differ from dreams and that the most noble ideas should lose a little of their lustre in realization,
since nothing human is perfect. But the important thing has escaped you if you have not noticed the
supernatural irony of history. For the end of revolutions and wars is the derisory opposite of the aims
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with which their leaders urged the nations into them.
The French Revolution was to wipe out the privileges of the Old Regime, and establish Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity for all men. Scarcely ten years later it had led to the Empire, which reestablished all the inequalities and all the coercion of the Old regime, only considerably aggravated.
France found herself engaged in a series of wars which ravaged Europe and left her vanquished and extenuated. The second and third Republics replaced the splendour of nobility by the luxury of wealth and
inaugurated two new methods of exploiting and oppressing people: mechanization and colonization.
The Empires of Germany and Austria rushed into the first world war because they felt themselves in
a position to surprise and grab the neighbouring countries in their disorder. War reduced the aggressers
to two small republics, starving and bankrupt. The Russian Empire fell because it saw no other means
of warding off threatening revolution than to make war, and as a consequence of war, the revolution fell
upon it and struck it down. The French, the English and the Americans waged war to defend democratic
freedom and to open markets for their products. Their victory made possible or led to the coming of
Communism, Fascism and National-Socialism, dictatorial and despotic regimes.
The aims of the Bolshevik revolution were fair payment for work, equal distribution of land, the
reconciliation of the nations, the abolition of armies and even of the state. What came about was the
grimmest economic and military dictatorship the nation has ever undergone.
Fascist Italy defied the whole world by seizing Addis-Abeba. It also conquered Albania and ignominiously grabbed Menton. From conquest to conquest it has come to lose Rome.
Hitler took Danzig. That is why he will lose Berlin.
This war began in almost the same conditions as the last and it will end in the same way.
If the English and Americans insist on annihilating Germany, they will find themselves face to face
with the Russians, a more formidable power, even more exclusive and impenetrable, even more hostile
to their hegemony. If they allow Germany to rise again, a third war will begin in the same conditions as
this one.
The sequence of absurdities is perfectly logical.
How could violence and chance lead to justice?
How could peace come into a world where nobody wants it?
For in war, it is not peace that is desired, but victory, which is quite different. And in peace, it is
not peace that men want to keep, but prestige, profit and convenience, the contrary of Peace.
Tell me, what do good, peaceful citizens do for justice and peace?
Good, peaceful citizens obey the laws of their country. Now, in a country where the law is strong
and respected, people are sheltered from highway robbery and civil war. One can therefore say that a
kind of justice and peace are ensured.
But only a kind of for they are a semblance and even a mask.
Peace and justice within the country constitute a protective framework for the free play of fraud,
corruption and ambition. Fortunes take their support from the law in order to maintain, generation after
generation, the most unacceptable pretensions. Ever new forms of the exploitation of human beings,
the enslavement of one class by another is openly founded on the law.
The ambitious have no need to resort to force when all they have to do is to use the law as a
tank with which to flatten out their enemies. Such are the internal limits of the law. They are easy
to understand when one has found out that the actual purpose of the law is not to maintain peace and
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justice but to maintain possession and sovereignty, which is quite a different matter.
As for the external limits of the law, they are clearer still since they are marked by the countrys
frontiers. On the other side of the frontier, there is probably a similar law in force, although established
on a different power. This similarity makes travelling and exchange possible. Travelling and exchange
make it possible to observe that peace and justice are the same for all men but that nowhere do they
correspond to the law of the states.
It is war that shows up the limits of State law, shows up its nature and its underside, shows that it
has almost no connection with the laws of justice and of peace.
For it is indeed the law of the State that suddenly transforms good, peaceful citizens into ferocious
soldiers. It is through obedience to the law, and by virtue of their submission, their courage, their
discipline, their punctuality, in short, of their qualities, that well-intentioned men succeed in causing
more havoc, more ruin and more deaths than all the criminals in the world.
As soon as a State declares war on another, it puts all the citizens of the other state outside the law.
Each of the two states compels its citizens to consider those of the other as bandits and to pursue and
execute them as such. And the good citizens of both sides are invested with the office of judge-cumexecutioner and forced, by that office, to justify the enemys opinion that they are armed robbers.
Yet the cause of one side and that of the other cannot be equally just, unless, of course, they are
equally unjust. Now, both sides pride themselves not only on defending justice, but on a justice that
justifies all the abominations that may be committed in its defence. What makes this furious error
possible is unconditional obedience to the laws of the state and the confusion of state law with moral
law.
The morals of good citizens have little to do with the exercise of virtue and the acquisition of
conscience. They are an adaptation to the reasons of convenience, convention and custom, which is
quite a different thing. Two-faced, two-edged morals, morals that see-saw at a given point and can be
turned outside-in like a glove, which proves that they are unconcerned with truth.
Therefore, you who want to learn how to put non-violence into practice, be clear, my friends, about
whom you will have to oppose. Not the violent, not the wicked or the criminal. Nor the indifferent, not
sceptics either, nor the hardened and depraved. No, my friends, it is the decent people you will clash
with. Those who, supported by the law, will denounce you as traitors and attack you as rebels, those
who, armed to the teeth, will call you dangerous. Yes, the decent people, and they will believe they are
doing right they will believe they are defending their country and their honour; they will believe they
are serving God.
And not without reason will they look upon you as troublemakers and public enemies, for in your
hands you have a weapon that can keep whole armies in check. You have power to overthrow everything
that ensures their safety in time of peace and their victory in time of war.
What I am saying sounds like unprecedented bragging when one considers the formidable empires
that are now at strife, the overwrought passions of the masses and the nations, the incalculable work
of machines set in motion, the millions of men in rank and at arms, their canons, their bombs, the
irresistible fatalities of history -and we poor little people are dreaming of resisting all this singlehanded!
Remember, nevertheless, that however inhuman and superhuman these systems may seem and
may really be, however invulnerable in appearance and from outside, they always have their point of
departure and their weak spot in man, poor little man, our fellow creature. For it is he who conceived
and made them and he need only turn aside from them for a moment for the terrifying apparatus to be
reduced to nothing, the poor little man with the fickle heart and the muddled head.
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Dont get involved with the external machinery, or fight around it, you will not stop anything and
will only be caught up in it yourselves. Touch the heart and the head and you will hit all the rest.
Supposing you have to stop a huge power-hammer and you have been told to stop it with your
hands.
Well, my hand cannot be helped you will say and in a sublime, unthinking impulse you will
stretch them out and the machine will mangle them.
Several have done this to the power-hammer of war.
They think that, given time, their example will incite thousands, millions of other hands, enough
hands to stop the machine, but the ten tons of steel that drop on to the anvil will relentlessly smash as
many hands as come under it.
Believe me, you dont even need your whole hand to stop the machine: a finger is enough. I shall
take you to a little cabin at the side, and I will show you a switchboard, and on the switchboard a tiny
lever you can push with your little finger. Immediately, there will be an astonishing silence; tha hammer
will hang in mid-air as if by enchantment. There is nothing miraculous about it, nothing difficult. You
just have to know where to switch off the current.
It is the conscience that must be touched. But how, if one has not acquired conscience?
When you work at acquiring conscience, you find yourself transported to the heart and the head
and the switchboard is within reach of your hand.
When one has acquired conscience one can help others to acquire it and give them the key to free
them from their problems.
The great external disorders called war and revolution are not so much due to bad intentions and
evil instincts as good intentions and wrong understanding. This explains why the common excuse for
all mistakes is the irresponsibility of not thinking.
When one considers the turn events have taken, it is not difficult to draw the conclusion that the
people who rush around in this closed ring are asleep.
Wake them up! And to begin with, wake up yourselves! Then you will find that the mechanical
and ineluctable sequences of history will fade like a dream.
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II.
Fatality,
or
Deliverance?
Give them warning from me.

When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt
surely die, and thou givest him not
warning, nor speakest to warn the
wicked from his wicked way, to save his
life, the same wicked man shall die in
his iniquity, but his blood will I
require at thine hand.
Ezekiel III, 18.

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1. The Two Blocs

Never has our world been so near unity or so far from union.
Thanks to unification after unification, big states absorbing small ones or sucking them into their
orbit, it has reached the most dangerous degree of division, division into two.
One cannot speak of two Kingdoms or two Alliances: the Two Blocs is indeed the name they
deserve.
And the nations that make up the two blocs deserve more and more to be called masses: shapeless,
heavy lumps made to roll downwards and flatten everything out.
The dominating powers of each bloc no longer bear the names of countries but are designated by
initials.
Two monsters1 , each of which has a claw stuck into the belly of the other.
2. The Similarity of Opposites

What first strikes one about these deadly enemies is their likeness.
Their first likeness is their enormous inhumanity.
Even the name of monster is not fit for them, for a monster is a mis-shapen natural animal, whereas
these societies have lost even their animal nature.
They are two enormous machines directed against each other, ready to destroy all men indifferently.
3. Violence and Lying

Let us note that each of the two blocs was established by revolution and bloodshed. Both were
founded on violence and are maintained by violence and lying.
Violence and lying are one. Gandhi teaches that nonviolence and truth are one and the same thing.
Therefore violence and lying are inseperable and to force is also to falsify.
The first of the forced or falsified truths of each regime is to deny the violence on which it is
founded and to claim to be peace-loving.
1
A third has sprung up since these lines were written, which postpones the collision (1959).
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No doubt it is to win peace that each boasts of having the most murderous bomb, that each prides
itself on having a standing army of millions of men at arms. Each bleats Peace.
But his dragons voice betrays his lambs horns (Revelations XIII, 11).
4. Irreligion and Mechanics

Each is established on a furious denial of the Christian religion, of all religion, of every tradition of
wisdom and from the outset gave free course to brutal and treacherous persecution of the church.
But the liberal regime, being older, has come to an arrangement with Heaven and now claims to
be The defender of Christian Civilization, which is its crowning impertinence. But the regime of the
godless, not to be outdone in lying, has followed this example and the Concordat already functions in a
manner satisfying to the State.
Nevertheless, materialism is the state religion of Bloc Two, whereas it is the preponderant belief in
Bloc One.
The faith of Materialism is Science, and its hope is Mechanics.
The solution of all human problems by Science and Mechanics takes the place of Salvation. To
every Christian truth, Science and Mechanics oppose a counter-truth.
5. Hypocrisy and Cynicism

In the first regime, lying predominates: idealistic, humanitarian and moral lying, fawning, financial
cheating with a commercial smile so that it seems friendlier. Besides the hypocrisy has been somewhat
tempered by age and custom.
But this regime must be accredited with atrocities beyond number: man-hunting on the four continents, national or colonial wars spread over the entire globe, ruin, ravage, degradation, enslavement
and corruption under colour of civilization and progress.
The other partly owes its success to its denunciation of the falsely devout hypocrisy of the first.
Therefore it presents itself as cynically utilitarian, amoral, irreligious and violent, which leads to the
presumption that it is exempt from lying, which is one lie more. Its propaganda has raised lying to the
height of a State institution and an exact science.
6. Father and Son

There is nothing surprising in the resemblance between the two blocs since the one came out of the
other.
Is it surprising that a son resembles his father, even if they hate each other and quarrel? Hatred and
anger are one more common characteristic.
There is nothing original in the second bloc. Nothing that has not been thought out point by point,
expressed, experimented and elaborated inside the first.
The Communist doctrine was invented and propagated by middle class persons. Moreover, it represents one of the dreams of the Western middle class: that of the human city raised to the perfection of
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the ant heap.
The dictatorship of the Proletariat is not the reign of the proletarian but the reign of the politician,
the policeman, the administrator, the professor and the technician, in short, of the middle class.
7. Upmanship in Democracy
Each regime claims to represent the will of the Great Number.
For that, the Great Number would have to have a will.
In addition, the holders of power or their rivals would have to have no means of pressure, seduction
or corruption and no advantage in holding power.
But as well as the other technicians, there are experts in social mechanics.
8. The Three Democratic Graces

Each claims that it has established or tends to establish Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
Here we have three lies of high flight and great wingspread.
Where Liberty is concerned, we shall only observe that the economy of both regimes is founded
on wage-earning, which is the modern form of slavery.
We shall not speak of military bondage nor of the multiple meticulous interlocking parts of the
complicated social machine in which every active citizen of each bloc is caught up.
As for Equality, we shall not dwell on it but merely compare the well-being of the head of state
with that of the least-paid workman in either regime.
Regarding Fraternity, the word can have no meaning for the millions of human beings who make
up what has no resemblance whatever to a family.
Common loathing of the other bloc constitutes the sacred union of each: fraternity in hate.
9. The Dialectics of History or the Chain of Violence

When the French Revolution broke out, the neighbouring Empires and Kingdoms united in coalition against it.
It was victorious, then vanquished.
It was victorious under the name of Empire, which was the name of its adversaries.
Vanquished, it won over Empires and Kingdoms which were all forced to adopt parliaments and
liberal institutions.
In the same way, the Communist revolution will be victorious by warfare or will be vanquished,
but its institutions and its practices will eventually invade all liberal republics.
That is why whoever is a devoted and passionate supporter of the bourgois regime is working for
the establishment of the other.
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From time to time, when too hard pressed by its adversary, the liberal regime sets up as a military
dictatorship.
Then it is that the resemblance between the two regimes, the national-socialist and the socialistnational, is at its greatest and the conflict between them at its harshest.
10.
The Interpenetration of Enmity
In each of the blocs, vast areas of the population, whole classes, entire nations place all their hopes
in the victory of the adverse bloc and would welcome the defeat of their own as liberation.
11.
The Inability to be One
If one of the two regimes got the better of the other and floored it, it would immediately split in
two, since the force of cohesion of each lies in its opposition to the other.
Neither of the two is capable or worthy of unity.
12.
An Unnoticed Relapse
Communism has been called State Capitalism. The statement is correct and confirmed by experience.
Capitalism is a concentration of wealth in the hands of private persons, which gives unjust advantages to a few, as well as giving them dangerous power over their fellowmen.
But Communism is the concentration of all capital in the hands of the state, which falls under the
control of some private persons. Power and riches are thus put into the same hands and the injustice
and the danger are increased.
On the other hand, capital is never quite private. As soon as it is invested in an enterprise, all who
have shares in the enterprise draw profits from it and have rights over it in varying degrees.
When the enterprise is big, it becomes an administrative machine from which all discretion is
excluded, a State within the State.
And although the state finances it and takes charge of it, neither the nature of the business nor the
lot of the workers is changed.
Which proves that when this change requires floods of blood, the bloodshed is sheer waste.
13.
Doctrine and Faith, No. Cunning and Power, Yes.
It is not, as people often think, a matter of two doctrines, two convictions, two religions confronting
each other, but of two parties of cunning powerholders ferociously fighting for hegemony.
The conflict is therefore groundless, endless, without any possibility of victory and without meaning. A bloodstained absurdity.
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Each bloc sees in the other the very reign of evil, in which it is not mistaken, even if it sees only
half the evil, the other half being in itself.
They are two faces of evil, of the same evil, two excrescences of Sin.
Two states which are the product of the state of Sin almost independently of the vice and wickenness of their nationals.
Two manners of biting the fruit of Lucre and of Power.
14.
Rivalry
It is rivalry that beats, breaks, gnaws, mines and poisons them.
It is rivalry that forges and fortifies them.
It is rivalry that perfects them, that creates their internal cohesion and their aggressive value.
Rivalry seems to cause much ruin, but it is the mainspring of business. It accelerates and refines
production, increases work, skill and equipment.
Rivalry urges the exact sciences on to useful discoveries and bold experiments, sharpens criticism,
stimulates cleverness, adjusts proofs and findings.
Rivalry is ruthless. It sweeps away the weak, the tenderhearted, the simpleminded. It keeps men
awake, on the alert, in alarm.
Rivalry acts on the nations and pushes each to out-do itself. Sometimes it bursts into war, but for
those who do not succumb it is trial and tempering by fire. After heavy bloodletting, life flows back
with renewed vigour.
Obviously, this is the case of the nations in the first bloc, those who sacrifice equality to liberty and
play the game of competition, with all the risks involved. But those of the second bloc mean to put an
end to it, even if they must sacrifice liberty to equality and private possession to the state. In place of
competition, there is coordination of effort for the general welfare.
Workers of the world, unite!
Well and good. But tell me.
Unite with. . . ?
Unite for. . . ?
or Unite against. . . ?
For there lies all the difference between love and disunion, between peace and discord. Every army
assembles in order to fight, every gang in order to steal. Union for the struggle between the classes
has nothing to do with love, still less with peace. The rivalry here is a standing principle. Revolution
achieved, the ambitious continue in the new set up to compete with one another in business by means
of politics. What the state has gained by force at the expense of private individuals will be made use of
against foreign nations.
15.
The Choice
Between these two evils, are we free to choose?
198
And what if we took the freedom to choose neither?
***
I know of a fine house, beautiful, and even splendid, with marble staircases, gilded ceilings, hangings and mirrors.
It is a gambling house.
The croupiers carry out their duties properly.
The Manager and the accountants are known for their scrupulous honesty.
But it is a gambling house.
All the people who haunt the big salon are elegantly dressed and well behaved. There is never any
unseemly behaviour here, or fights or vulgar speech. The supervision is such that tricksters and robbers
never dare enter. Even the losers observe the unwritten rule that requires one to go out without batting
an eyelid and commit suicide elsewhere.
This house is a source of considerable profit for the whole town.
But it is a gambling house.
In this gambling house, we do not want to lose and we do not want to win.
We do not want to gamble there and we do not want to work there.
We do not want to manage it or to sweep in it.
We do not want to be tipped in the lift or in the cloakroom.
Why not?
Because it is a gambling house.
***
Opposite, there is a no less perfect house. It is a model prison, the cleanest of its kind.
We do not want to live there, neither as prisoners nor as guardians.
If we are prisoners, we do not want hot and cold water in our cells. We do not want a spring bed or
better food.
Do you know what we want?
We want a file.
***
Yes, but there is no way out, no flight and no choice possible. For the free world there is no
choice to not choose. Whoever tries to remain neutral finds himself between the hammer and the anvil.
16.
The Confluences of Evil

It is customary to call war, war that breaks out, and to call peace, war that stays hidden.
199
It is customary to oppose the pacific applications of Technique and Science to their application to
warfare.
There are simpleminded and sentimental people who feel astonished and even indignant that these
admirable discoveries due to human genius should serve for murder and destruction, whereas scientists
and technicians feel no embarassment about eating in both mangers and see no contradiction in drawing
their income from both applications.
They are right: they know what they are about and that the two are one and the same.
The same plant manufactures tractors and tanks. Gunpowder and Crankpots Constipation Cure
come from the same laboratory. The Therapeutics practised by specialists of the soul are also used by
the Psychological Services of Armies and the Police and by braincramming and brainwashing contribute
to victories, occupation of enemy territory, the retrieval or rallying of opinion, the political re-education
of the insubordinate.
If the scientist worked for the sake of truth, and not for the sale of his discoveries, none of that
would be possible.
If rivalry did not set scientist against scientist, manufacturer against manufacturer, dealer against
dealer, this high degree of technical efficiency would not be reached and could not be conceived.
The same rivalry that produces, links and bit by bit penetrates pacific work, gives rise on the
international plane to war and the work for war which absorbs and consumes the product of peace.
Science and technique cannot be stripped of their destructive virtues, for they are their purest
manifestation.
The one that most conforms to their purpose.
17.
The Outcome
The benefits and the marvels of Science and Technique may very well be called in doubt.
But there is one thing that in all good faith one must recognize, and that is their masterpiece and
supreme achievement.
For their masterpiece and supreme achievement is the Bomb.
Yesterday, it was still possible to be mistaken about the signification of the edifice; today, no.
For the fronton is now inscribed:
DISINTEGRATION OF THE ATOM
Is it clear?
Do you still refuse to understand?
Let him who has eyes and intelligence see and read the signature, and spell it out aloud:
SATAN
or, Violence and Lying.
Father of lies and a murderer since the beginning. Moreover, Prince of this World.
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***
Well, after that great outburst I fell asleep, for it was late, and I dreamt. I dreamt I was in the train.
My neighbour said to me Really, we are ungrateful for the times we live in. Getting accustomed
to things has made us blind and we are incapable of marvelling any more. Yet what we have here before
our eyes is a miracle.
There is no greater wonder in the Golden Legend or in the story of Merlin the Enchanter.
Just think of this train speeding a hundred times, a thousand times faster than a runaway horse, and
there we are tranquilly seated on these cushions. One of us is smoking, another reading a humourous
newspaper, another eating a sausage, another sleeping with his handkerchief over his eyes while a
hundred thousand runaway horses are sweeping us along in their whirlwind.
Indeed, telegraph poles were whipping the sky, the countryside was streaming past, we rushed
through a station, a tunnel swallowed us up with a noise of thunder, we shot up at the shunting points.
Then we seemed to be dropping through space.
A buzz of voices was heard in the corridors the engine driver has gone mad all he can do is
push up the speed, but he doesnt know how to use the brakes. . .
I was seized with such terror that I woke up. And sighed with relief, for it was in the nick of time.
A second later and the catastrophe was upon us, and who knows if I would ever have woken up.
But have I? I am not so sure, not sure that I am holding the pen that is writing these words. Perhaps
it is now that I am dreaming, while I. . . while we. . . while all of us are in the train rushing headlong,
rushing to the end, the end, the end of the rails.
18.
Fatality
Unjust fate! Blind fatality! It is pointless to say unjust, blind, just as it is pointless to say that a
circle is round, that shade is dark, that death is horrible. Useless to revolt against the ineluctable law of
destiny, useless to struggle. Ancient legend and fairy story show that it is in trying to elude it that one
succumbs.
Everyone knows what oriental fatalism is: a religious error, or rather, superstitious folly, a denial
of Providence, a stagnation of the will and of the intelligence. As soon as the wretch sees danger, he
says It was written and calamity does indeed fall upon him, all the more fatally as he does nothing to
protect himself against it, just as he did nothing to foresee it.
But let us now speak of something nobody ever mentions. Let us speak of Western fatalism.
As was to be expected, it is the reverse of the other. It is a hard-working fatalism. An active,
inventive and combative fatalism.
While the oriental remains inert, staring vacant-eyed as if thunderstruck, the westerner throws
himself into endeavour, racks his brains and wears hismself out, his attention riveted to his task.
And should you pull his sleeve and say to him Take care, my friend, dont go further without
knowing what lies ahead, he will shout at you angrily, Leave me alone! Im in a hurry, Ive got work
to do, if you havent! Ive no time to listen to your nonsense.
And if you point out to him that he is just two steps away from an abyss, Oh, yes, no doubt he
replies. But theres no turning back now.
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19.
Experimental Proof of Destiny

Fatalism is a mistake, but one that events always prove right.
When a man believes in Fatality, either because he does not do what he should, or because he does
what he should not, he does indeed always meet his fate, which is to hasten to his downfall.
20.
The Logic and Mechanics of Fatality

Well, whats to do about it? You cant very well not invent the bomb!
When you have invented everything, including the thinking-machine, you cant help inventing the
bomb!
And when you have invented it, you cant very well not sell it to the government for the safeguard
of the fatherland!
And then you cant very well not sell it to the enemy to save the rights of Science, which is universal!
And now, you cant very well afford to have fewer bombs than they!
Besides, the more bombs you have, the more peace you have. Knowing that we have so many will
make the enemy think (he will certainly think, but of what? Perhaps of how to drop his bomb on us first
and wipe us out at a stroke. The explosion might also precede the thinking it takes less time).
We found our assurance of peace on terror. But terror is the strongest of all motives for war.
What does it matter! We cant very well turn back.
Thus, on all sides, each conscientiously exerts himself to bring about his own death.
21.
The Origins of Western Tragedy
the Greeks invented the

Western fatalism is a set of words that should not surprise us. AnankL:
word and the thing, and the Greeks are the fathers and founders of the Western World.
Greek Tragedy is the lesson of the hero struck down by fate.
The peculiarity of the hero is to be the bearer of the fate to which he is doomed.
Doomed from the beginning, before any fault.
Doomed, not because he is guilty, but because he is the hero. Doomed by his virtues rather than by
his crime.
By virtue of his virtues, doomed to commit his crime, in spite of himself and almost unwittingly,
the crime that will justify his doom.
Oedipus kills his father, but without knowing that it is his father.
He marries the widow, his mother, and becomes king, but does not know that it is his mother.
Plague strikes the city and it is discovered that the anger of the gods springs from a double sacrilege.
As king and judge, Oedipus seeks the criminal. He himself is the criminal but does not know it.
Dread of the catastrophe is always a major motive for the heros feats.
202
It is because the catastrophe foretold is on its way, and one knows neither when, nor why, nor how
it will happen, and in order to escape it, that one plunges into some great adventure which will provide
the catastrophe with its hour, its reason and its form.
***
He is not always terribly handsome, the little white man.
He has a little tie, a little moustache and a ballpoint pen.
He is sometimes palish, sometimes chubby.
Nevertheless, make no mistake: he is a hero.
He is Hercules and his labours and his monsters, he is Dedalus with his automatic statues, his wings
stuck on and his labyrinth, he is Prometheus with his fire and his chains.
He is capable of exploits such as all other nations could attribute only to their gods.
He has turned the miracle into something daily, domestic and culinary.
He can say, Go to the end of the corridor and see if I am there and he is! Go and look for me
at the ends of the earth and you find him there!
He mounts to heaven on wings of steel,
He builds cities that glide on the waters
By the turn of a key he cancels space.2
Like Orpheus who descended into hell, tomorrow he will go into the moon, a hell in the heavens.
What race can resist him?
All have been reduced by his force or seduced by his trickery.
Nature he treats as a beast of burden. He puts it between the shafts and sometimes on the spit.
This triumphal hymn may seem unseasonable at a time when in Asia, in Africa and all over the
world, nations in revolt are driving him out. Before the end of this century, the last wall of his Empires
will have crumbled. However, his defeat is merely apparent, for he is beaten only with his own arms,
and discussed only in his own terms. The more they hate him, the more they cling to him; the more they
reject him, the more they imitate him, the more they think themselves rid of him, the more like him they
become. What the victors of the Boxers war were unable to achieve, namely, the westernization of the
Far East, is now being carried out thoroughly by the peoples Republic of China, Japan had preceded
it in contamination even before its victory over the Russians. What the English conquest had been
unable to do in India for a century and a half, the independent government carried out within a few
decades. From Indo-China to Maghreb Western penetration, begun by occupying the country in spite of
the resistance of the oppressed, was completed without resistance after the departure of the oppressors.
22.
Fatality and Sin

Nevertheless, his time will come and cannot but come soon. The heros fatal hour.
The Journey of the Three Kings (a mystery play for Christmas) by Lanza del Vasto.
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And if he finds nobody to strike him down, he will tear out his own eyes and rend himself with
his own hands like so many other heroes in whom vindictive fury outdoes the love of life. Thus, by his
crime, as by his punishment, he carries out the condemnation signed beforehand, inscribed in him from
the beginning:
Original condemnation.
If we examine Original Condemnation in the light of Original Sin, a ray of revelation strikes what,
to the profound perception of the Inspired Ancients, was sheer horror, stupor and obscurity: Tragedy.
For the Sin, Original Sin, is also crime, error and woe, and its Fatality weighs on the human species,
on the whole of the human species.
23.
The Damnation of the Hero
The hero is destined to a fall because of his greatness, and his greatness is not unrelated to that of
the luminous figure at the origin of the Fall: Lucifer.
The disastrous splendour of the hero is to be half-god, which swells up his human nature out of
all proportion, and weakens the divine nature to which it is harnessed. The impossible team can only
smash itself to pieces.
Ye shall be as gods, was the promise (Genesis III, 5). The hero is not the spokesman and servant
of God, but a demi-god who serves, speaks for and honours himself. He sacrifices to his own glory and
in need steals the fire of Heaven so that men will glorify him.
He is rich in generosity and genius. He possesses to the highest degree the virtue which is the
substance of all others: Courage.
But as we know, Original Sin is not of the same dimension as what is called morality. The greatest
virtues allow it to subsist intact. The great virtues then become the strength of sin.
Tragic virtues, violent and murderous, therefore fatal.
24.
Definition of the White Man
If we had to define the white man (the one whose character and portrait we began to draw) we
should say:
He is the heathen Hero to some extent baptised.
This complicates his destiny and aggravates his tragedy.
Baptism was given him very quickly, very soon, before he had time to notice. Since then he lives
as if he had not received it.
Nothing (apart from a few phrases and gestures) nothing in his conduct, his feelings, his desires,
his thoughts, nothing in the civilization that has come out of him lets it be seen that he is different from
the non-baptized.
But baptism, a divine power buried in his essence, cannot dwell there inoperative.
Consequently the baptised must henceforward save himself or be doubly sinful.
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25.
Conversion and Return

The moment has come to speak of the remedy after speaking at such length of the ill.
Now, seeing that in the very first pages of the Old Testament the question of human destiny is raised
by Sin and seeing that all history (even Biblical history) is marked by it at every turning point, it is to be
expected that we shall find the answer, the key to the mystery, in the first pages of the New Testament.
In fact, how does the New Testament or the Good News begin?
By the preaching of John the Baptist, the forerunner.
And what does the voice of One crying in the Wilderness enjoin? (in the Wilderness, not in the
City, not even in the Holy City, in the Wilderness which is the contrary of the city).
Repent! it cries. And this is the answer to the question raised at the beginning of history.
The word in Hebrew means Convert yourselves. Turn back to the Principle. Turn back. The
Greek and Latin words signify turn inwards.
And the voice of the man in the wilderness adds, Every valley shall be filled and every mountatin
and hill shall be brought low (Luke, III, 5).
Another voice proclaims, He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low
degree (Luke, I, 52).
One of the dominant themes of the evangelical message will be The first shall be last.
Then the Beatitudes will be announced:
Blessed, the poor
Blessed, the meek
Blessed, that weep now
Blessed, that hunger after righteousness
Blessed, the merciful
Blessed, the pure of heart
Blessed, the peacemakers
Blessed, the persecuted.
Above all, there is the living beatitude or the story of Jesus, Son of the Almighty and himself God,
who is born on straw between the ox and the ass and who dies on a cross between two thieves.
Which means that in Everymans innermost heart as well as in the outer world everything must be
turned upside down.
At this price, Baptism, the bath that washes away the original stain.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God (John III, 5).
26.
The Kingdom of Heaven

Recompense of the good.
Revenge of the oppressed.
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Consolation of the wretched.
The kingdom the gospel announces is the Heaven one enters after a holy death.
To want to establish it on earth is folly.
Why?
Because its impossible.
Why impossible?
Because of Original Sin.
But if Baptism has freed us from it?
If it is impossible, why were we taught to say Thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven?
One does not pray for fire to be cooler or for the sun to shine at night or for impossible things. If
we pray for the Kingdom to come, it is because we believe that it can and must come.
I venture to say that if it does not come, it is because we do not believe that it will.
We put on airs of wanting it, since we pray, but we do not want it, for if we did, it would come.
True, Christ said, My kingdom is not of this world.
This world being the one of which the Devil is Prince.
The people who refuse the kingdom of God are those who prefer and put in its place the Empire of
Caesar or the Republic with the Phrygian bonnet or the Supreme Soviet.
But Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Is. The present. The first
and the eighth are in the present. Whereas most of the beatitudes are in the future.
The kingdom of heaven is in your heart.
The kingdom in its plenitude can only be the reign over life freed from the limitations of time,
space and the flesh: eternal life.
But eternal life is not merely in the future, it is of all time and outside time and therefore also in
the present.
Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Matt.
XVIII, 20).
Where there is love and charity, there God is.
Where God is, even in the midst of men living on earth there is Heaven. A garden flowers around
them, and the garden is visible to fleshly eyes.
At the sight of the first Christian communities, the heathen exclaimed, See how they love one
another.
We learn from the Acts of the Apostles that they put all their goods in common and were of one
heart.
When the Heathen unwittingly take part in the pomp and works of Satan if they are dazzled by
the science of phenomena and the quibbling of the arguers of the century, if they let themselves be
enchained by necessity that is Adams fault.
When Christians are in the same case, that is their own fault.
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27.
Hell on Earth
If the world they dominate by their number is not the reign of Peace, if I see no Garden flowering
around them, then I have doubts about their faith.
But what if it is hell on earth around them. . . ?
But what if it is they who make it. . . !
28.
God Forsworn
O if only to God they were heathen! It would be so much better for us and for them!
I have seen heathens respect the insect and the serpent, awed by the presence in them, as in other
creatures, of the Creator.
I have seen heathens bowing down before a tree in which, clear for all to see, a soul lives.
I have seen heathens honour a guest with the only bowl of rice they had, because God himself was
visiting them in a poor mans guise, as is His custom. . .
Ah! would to God they were heathens, the meddlers for whom nothing is foul or stinks enough
to keep them at a distance. They paw and finger and turn things inside out, misuse, degrade, and
exploit man, the whole of nature, tamper with the heavens and with the microbe and blight the whole
of creation.
What name shall I give them. Christians? No.
Heathens, alas, No!
Renegades. Traitors.
29.
The Work of Disintegration
Through meddling with everything out of sacrilegious curiosity, for gain, for amusement, for power,
they have come to attack the tiniest particle of Being, the one that by definition is uncut-able,3 being
the very last link in the chain, the atom. And they have managed to split that too.
And now their Matter, Matter which they worship, is like a ladder in a stocking.
The Lord laughs and says I will see what their end shall be.
He made a pit and digged it and is fallen ito the ditch he made. His mischief shall return upon his
own head (Ps. VII, 15).
30.
The Reward
Keep it, your treasure! Cherish it!
You have invented it,
You have manufactured it,
Greek. A = not, temno = cut.
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You have deserved it,
Your bomb!
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Mat. VI, 21).
It is in the bomb that you have faith; may it console you now, may it comfort you and keep you!
You dragged yourself on your belly before the Belphegor of Science-without-Wisdom, before the
Behemoth of Justice-without-Love and they have given your reward!
***
And so, most gallant defenders of the fatherland, fearless and blameless Knights who hold the
means to mass extermination of enemy nations, without even seeing them, and unseen by them we owe
you gratitude beyond all bounds to defend us thus.
We owe you at least our confidence, do we not? We owe it to you to feel safe behind the mountain
of war-engines you have so prudently accumulated out of affection for us!
One of you4 , it is true, has declared that against an attack of this kind, our territory is without
defence, but he has guaranteed and promised that, once we are dead, an automatic ripost will give the
enemy measure for measure.
An epic past all imagination and which leaves the greatest of poets speechless.
Allalta fantasia qui manco possa5 .
Not at all, says the Competent-Economist with a superlatively reasonable air. We have all these
bombs only so as not to use them. Terror should suffice.
Is that how you reassure us?
If it reassures us, it ought to reassure the enemy too.
But wouldnt it be cheaper without the bomb?
Thus all your efforts, all your expenditure aim deliberately at uselessness, Mr. CompetentEconomist?
There might be a grain of truth in this insanity. It may, after all, not be necessary to use the bomb.
It is possible that everything will be destroyed without warfare.
The tests carried out in the deserts, at the poles, in the isles may be sufficient to render the earth
uninhabitable by coming generations. They darken the sun and make the air, the rain, the rivers and
vegetation pestilential. Waste from factories adds to the pollution. This war is waged, not against an
enemy, but against our own children.
Peacetime manufactures are, of course, almost as harmful as the others. To poison all the seas in
the world, all we have to do is go on building liners and tankers with atomic engines and let seven of
them be wrecked (seven being the average number of shipwrecks per year).
The question is not what is the right or wrong way to use the Machine and Disintegration. That is
very easy to answer provided ones view of right and wrong is clear enough, distinct enough and
4
The British Minister of Defence in a recent speech. He adds that he thanks the population for taking it in such good
part.
5
My high imagination lacked power cried Dante, faced with the ineffable splendour of God (Paradis, XXX, 142).
208
short enough. The important thing to know is that the Machine and Disintegration are the result of a
wrong use of the intelligence6 a spiritual inversion, a sin against the spirit that calls for death, and
cannot be forgiven.
31.
To Die Three times
To die in atomic war is to die three times, and above all, to die for nothing, since what one gives
ones life for dies at the same time. It is to die the death of ones posterity, die the death of all nature and
die the death of the soul with that of the body, since one is the victim of a crime committed by oneself.
32.
Dubious Whiteness
O White Man,
Would to God you were a heathen!
Would to God you were a barbarian!
For the Hero, whether his name is Achilles or Arthus, Perseus or Lancelot of the Lake, Ulysses or
Percival, and however guilty he may be of murder, madness, or heinous passion, nevertheless remains
pure of three things: cowardice, deceit and avarice.
He is capable of anything to show that he is afraid of nothing.
And like all the bold, he is frank and arrogant rather than a hypocrite, and lavish rather than niggardly. It is the reason for his wrongdoing and his downfall, and also for his magnificence in his
wrongdoing and his downfall!
But you, little white man, you are cowardly, deceitful and calculating. What led you into the quest
for the Absolute Arm was solely the venemous treachery of the sneak! Some bacteriological prowess
would put another feather in your cap!
Cowardice, falsehood and avarice are your strategy, your politics and your technique! Crooked
hero, economical Knight Errant, spurious Christian!
Which is the reason for your specific ugliness, little Grey Man!
33.
Gods Justice
No, we do not believe in blind fatality.
We believe in Gods justice and in the fatality that follows in the train of sinful blindness.
By what sign can one recognize Gods justice? By this: each adjusts it to his case and passionately
inflicts it on himself.
Each reaps as he has sown, and, thanks to God, a hundredfold. It is up to the sower to recognize
the seed. The seed never makes a mistake but grows according to its kind.
Each is measured by the measure he uses.
6
Gandhi. Their Civilization and our Deliverance. God gave man an intelligence so that he might know his Creator. Man
has misused that intelligence and forgotten his creator.
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Whoever is attached to his body will go where his body goes, into the earth.
Whoever loves his hoard shuts his love up in the cellar or in his cashbox.
Whoever uses the sword will perish by the sword.
Whoever enchains a slave rivets himself to the other end of the chain.
Whoever worhips an idol ends up by resembling it.
Whoever seeks his liberation in machines is trapped in the machinery.
Whoever disintegrates the atom ends up disintegrated.
34.
The Simile of the Fig-tree
We believe in His justice, but also in His mercy! Perhaps the end has not yet come? Perhaps there
are ten just men in Sodom? Perhaps we have not all turned away from Him?
And even if the powers of the heavens shall be shaken (Mat. XXIV, 29) by the fault of man, even
if the signs of the end loom on the horizon, perhaps this end is a renewal since it is written:
And when these things come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads: for your redemption
draweth nigh (Luke XXI, 28).
Behold the fig tree, and all the trees: when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own
selves that summer is now nigh at hand.
Indeed, we believe we have seen that strong green shoot and we cannot remain downcast.
Our hope springs from the providential relation between the two greatest discoveries of our century.
The Lord says, See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil (Deut. XXX,
15).
The two greatest discoveries of the century are the atomic bomb and non- violence.
35.
Two Cosmic Powers

Not in vain do they arise simultaneously at the antipodes of space and spirit.
Terms of the dialectics of history that neither Marx nor Hegel foresaw.
Cosmic forces at work since the beginning.
The rape of the atom since the fall of the satanic angels and the fall of our first ancestors, as we
have seen.
Nonviolence, since before heaven and earth, when wisdom was daily His delight rejoicing always
before Him in the beginning of His way (Prov. 8).
36.
The Discovery of Non-violence
When we speak of nonviolence as a discovery of the century, this does not mean that a new spiritual
value or religious conception has been revealed, but that a revolutionary and renewing power has entered
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the history of the nations.
In his preface to Young India, Romain Rolland says, I saw this wave swell from the depths of
the East and it will not subside until it has swept over the whole world.
This is the discovery that the century itself is beginning to make, forced to find a way out of its
dilemma.
37.
Modern Science and Non-violence
A great scientist? No, I am a small scientist, said Einstein. I know that my knowledge and
discoveries cant contribute much to human welfare. There is only one great scientist in our century,
and that is Gandhi.
Which shows that even those who do not grasp the antinomy between the two great discoveries,
cannot avoid their confrontation.
It is intereesting to put Einsteins remark on Gandhi side by side with Gandhis remark on nonviolence:
The ancient Rishis who discovered it were greater scientists than Faraday and Papin. . .
The story of Gandhis life is entitled, My Experiments with Truth as if he considered nonviolence an experimental science.
38.
The Novelty of Non-violence
Just what is this discovery? and whats new in this novelty? a Catholic friend of mine asked with
some irritation. He is a sincere Catholic, active in doing good. And what does this Hindu have to teach
us, we who have the gospel?
What have you read in the gospel about non-violence? I asked.
Unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other, he replied.
Well said! And have you done it?
Surprised, he hesitated, then Er. . . No! never, I confess.
And you are a Christian and have always lived among Christians. Have you ever seen anybody do
it?
No, never.
Why?
As he did not answer, I aswered for him. Surely because its impossible! It would be ridiculous. . .
it would even be rather. . . what shall I say. . . dishonourable.
He agreed.
Aha! you Christians, I exclaimed. There goes your faith that moves mountains! So Christ came
to teach us impossible, ridiculous and even dishonourable things!
Now, a Hindu, having read the same words in the same book, concluded, Well, lets do it.
Thats whats new in the novelty.
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He said, Let us try! and he risked his own life and that of all his people.
And this was the discovery: brilliant success in the eyes of the astounded world.
But by one of Destinys terrible strokes of justice, who should the Hindus persecutors and enemies
be but Christians.
Now, the Hindu had learned that one must love ones enemies.
And the greatest good he could wish them, was that they should be converted, and he converted
several.
Not that he made them change their religion for his. No, he converted them to their own religion.
Thus showing them that to be Christian, it is not enough to say7 : Lord! Lord! and to have been
baptised, but one must be converted, that is to say, turned the other way. Everything must be turned the
other way, all the ways of thinking, feeling and doing in what Christ calls this world (Luke VI, 46).
39.
The Antiquity of Non-violence

Non-violence is as old as the hills, says Gandhi.
It is taught in the gospel with clarity and force that leave nothing to be desired, and that is where
Gandhi found it.
Five centuries earlier, it was preached by Buddha who added, Such is the ancient Law.
It is inscribed in the books of the Chinese Tao.
The Vedic Rishis knew it.
In the Bible, it makes its first appearance in Genesis, in the story of Joseph and his brothers.
Therefore Gandhi brings no new revelation. Non-violence has always been known and taught,
although with some reserve, due no doubt to the fact that it requires a high degree of saintliness. When
Jesus commands his people to behave differently from the heathen and to love and bless those that hate
and persecute them he ends with saying, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven
is perfect (Matt. V, 48)
What is new and of unprecendented boldness is the application of this principle of inner perfection
to all the planes of life, and to the life of all, to the conduct of a nation, to the conquest of freedom,
to the exercise of power, to maintaining justice, to diplomacy, to politics, to economy, to education, to
medicine, to diet, to family and daily life.
40.
The Pure Hero
Was Gandhi a saint or a sage? The question is often asked. And whatever the answer may be, it is
already odd that it should be asked, for he presents himself as a leader of men and a troublemaker by
the same standards as Garibaldi or Bolivar, and concerning people of that kind it is not common to feel
that kind of doubt.
Gandhi always protested with great energy against being regarded as a saint, and protested with
incredible success in a country where every and any street-corner fakir finds worshippers. He himself
7
Moreover this is what Christ and the Church teach.
212
affirms that he was never directly visited or inspired. He was never known to heal a leper or walk
upon the waters. His piety was ardent and sincere, his views on religion were simple and sound, even
childlike. He was neither a priest nor a preacher, but one of the faithful and devout. Everything about
him was reasonable and natural, fully and highly human, but human only.
A sage?
Just and judicious, yes. Levelheaded and moderate, detached, serene and kind, all that and more.
But what sort of man is this oriental sage who goes in for politics and shoulders worry, disappointment,
inevitable nastiness instead of remaining with himself?
To situate Gandhi correctly, it seems to me that one must recognise him as the Pure Hero.
***
We have already spoken of the Heathen Hero, an impure hero, and of the warrior hero and the
tragic hero, later and degraded types of the Pure Hero.
To find the hero in his purity, one must go back to the primordial times of Human Sacrifice. Barbarian times that cannot be recalled without horror, but we forget that in this horror, nothing has
changed except for the worse. For massacre and martyrdom continue, and we continue to call them
massacre and martyrdom in memory of the sacred meaning they no longer have. The only difference is
that we no longer offer them to God.
The reasons for which the Civilized devote themselves to such practices are no doubt too complicated to be sorted out, but the reason of the Primitive is simple and clear:
Since God is Prime and the Principle, since we owe him all good, the least we can give him in
return is the first and best of all things: the first-fruits.
And our own first-fruits, those of our house, are the firstborn; and the first-fruits of the Kingdom
are the Kings first son.
Of all, the most beautiful and the most noble, revered and educated amid every kind of refinement,
the Prince dedicated to the altar and the knife: such is the Pure Hero.
The Sacrifice is the summit and crown of his life. He goes to it joyfully among the flowers, the
hymns and the incense, to represent all humanity to God, himself half god among men.
41.
The Victim and Impure Heroes
The custom was universal. In France, only the severe law of the Emperor Claude was able to put a
stop to it. Among the original inhabitants of America it lasted till modern times.
When God asks Abraham for his eldest son, the son of the Promise, Abraham at once understands
what the matter is. The thing is common in the region. The Bible story marks the end of an institution.
The lesson to be drawn from it is that the intention is enough, the execution is too much but the
intention is demanded.
I will go so far as to say that, in this sense, Human Sacrifice is the only one valid. Other sacrifices
are substitutes. It is written: The head of the lamb is put in the place of the head of the man; the heart
of the lamb is put in in the place of the heart of the man8 .
8
Sumero-Assyrian inscription, first millenary BC.
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Human Sacrifice is still in force, and Holy Mass is one, since in the fullness of time the Son of
Man came and put his human heart in the place of the lambs heart, revealing a thing hidden from the
beginning.
***
Sometimes the victim substituted is still a human being: a prisoner of war, preferably of great
beauty and of noble origin, is sacrificed in place of the son, whence the words victim and Host9 .
Once the victim or hero-in-spite-of-himself- has taken the place of the Hero on the altar, the name
of hero is improperly bestowed on any brave man who volunteers to sacrifice himself for the sake of the
common good.
Such is the warrior hero, as War Monuments testify, and rightly, for the warrrior is not truly a hero
until he is dead. Alive, he is a very impure hero, however brave. For it is in order to kill that he goes
to war, not to present himself to death, which he repels with all his might, or dodges. The warrior is a
hero and at the same time an executioner.
Greek Tragedy is a human sacrifice which has degenerated into an entertainment. The Chorus
replaces the officiants, the Hero is the object of oblation. The fatality that weighs on the hero is that his
function is to die innocent and honoured. But the sacramental meaning has been lost, the order of the
liturgy has been changed into a sequence of acts and passions which, the more art renders them human
and true to life, the more the final catastrophe seems obscure, blind and horrible. The same thing is
true of the Tragedy of History if one forgets the sacred themes of the Fall, Conversion, and Redemption
which alone give it meaning.
In spite of the havoc he spreads and the murders he commits either from a sense of professional
duty or on impulse or out of sheer caprice, the warrior remains honoured among men, whereas the
honest merchant with all the conveniences he brings, plus his smile, will never ravish the admiration of
the crowd, or of poets, or of women.
In this ingratitude, there is a profound justice which surpasses reason. This justice stems from the
First Sin and the Fruit which was its object. Now, the merchant eats only that10 whereas the warrior
may take a bite of it but he immediately spits it out.
War tears men away from their sordid tasks, their petty worries, their paltry pleasures and their
mean self-seeking and confronts the soul with life and death and the riddle of destiny. How many
consciences that nothing else could affect have been awakened by its shock! which explains why
no religion has damned it entirely, and why it has not only always been sung and justified, but even
sanctified and blessed.
Gandhi, who had read the Mahabharata in prison, said to me one day, Two conclusions are to be
drawn from this admirable poem. On the one hand, the exaltation of the hero, on the other, proof of the
complete futility of war. Indeed, in the very first pages one finds the perfect conditions for heroic war:
a war that starts from nothing, from a more or less imaginary offence between relatives, and the result is
the absurd extermination of both sides. But it provides the heroes with the opportunity to express what
they were born for and that is worth many a year spent in meaningless ease.
9
10
Victim from victus, vanquished. Host from hostis, enemy.

The fruit or profit.
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42.
Honour
Wisdom and Saintliness are distinct forms of perfection which may overlap but are not of the same
meaning or colour. They are intrinsically different, although in reality they unite and reach perfection
only in each other. Honour must be distinguished from both. Honour is proper to the hero and is his
peculiar law.
The hero is a third type of spiritual man, the simplest, simple as instinct. Honour is morals in their
wild state.
When rid of the supersitious aberration with which it is often mixed in legend and in history,
primitive morality is very sound and very high, provided it remains faithful to its original principles:
self-respect and self-sacrifice, and that it does not deviate into conceit or ignorance-of-ones limits and
violence or the-sacrifice-of-others.
The first postulate of the system, as evident as as that of Euclid concerning the straight line, is
that every virtue is a victory over fear and that every opportunity is to be taken to show that one has
conquered fear in oneself.
It is a strange grace, this gush of life called Bravery, this power life has to surpass itself, to throw
itself overboard, this gift a living man has to want to go beyond his life rather than to save it.
The heros testimony has metaphysical import. Turning his back on the labyrinth of theories and
cutting argument short, he affirms by his life and his death that there is something greater than himself
something by which and for which he exists.
He is ready and even eager to die because he knows (as the Gita teaches, and teaches precisely to
the hero) that life cannot die, that it does not die when the body dies, but casts off a garment to put on
a new and more luminous one.
The second requirement and implication of honour is the Decor or Beauty of honour. Beauty
becomes a virtue here. The Beauty of the Hero does not lie in more or less regular and pleasant
features, but in what is the true definition of beauty: the splendour of the true: the outward signification
of something inward. The hero is transparent to what he signifies: his face, his body, his gestures,
his clothing, all his acts, and above all, his supreme act, his death, signify and represent. This is why
the true hero and the tragic or dramatic hero explain each other. The modesty of the violet is not the
perfume that suits him; on his part it would be pretence and poltroonery.
Everything about him is magnificent and somewhat spectacular. The fact is that the victim of the
Sacrifice must always be entire, spotless, lustrous and crowned with flowers.
His Greatness is without grandiloquence or vanity. Compare the sober speech of Joan of Arc, of
Saint Louis or of Bayard with the tirades of Corneille or Victor Hugo or Rostand and measure the
distance between the true hero and the hero of baroque, romantic or bourgeois imagination. Nothing
is more fitting to the decor of the hero than reserve, modesty and even profound humility. His person
is exalted and glorified solely for sacrifice. The hero effaces himself in his glory like the priest in his
golden chasuble.
The opposite of vanity (or emptiness) is value, in other words, fullness that surpasses the visible.
The hero cannot and must not suffer affronts or infamy lest it stain the message he bears. The measure
of the Hero is Dignity, which is the high duty of being and appearing worthy of what one represents.
Dignity is called self-respect when it expresses itself in refusal: refusal to lower oneself, to cling,
to keeep ones mouth shut, to step back, to pretend, to complain, to compromise oneself. But most
important of all, refusal to profit.
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On this point the hero goes against the current, like the Saint, for sacrifice offered is the contrary
of the Fruit eaten. Refusal to profit is therefore a sign of redemption.
The commandments of Honour contradict the morality of economics and ignore rational morality.
The hero does not set up collective utility as a superior value; he does not oppose the interest of several
to his own interest. He opposes profit with gratuity. Situated somewhere between the ecstasy of sacrifice
and the excitement of play, his adventure often takes a disconcerting turn. He cares nothing for Kants
Categorical Imperative; he obeys his lord, a living man whom he admires and loves, or obeys God, a
living lord whom one admires and listens to.
Action, says the Gita, belong to you, and action is better than inaction, but the Fruit of the
Action does not belong to you.
In the heat of combat, the warrior remains as detached, as calm and free as the monk sitting
cross-legged in meditation. In India, in Persia, in Tibet and in Japan, there are schools of impassive
meditation at the height of effort or of danger (wrestling, fencing, shooting with bow and arrow, music
and dancing are practiced in this sense).
Dignity or Self-respect (unlike Pride) implies respect for others, from which springs Justice, the
heros sole passion. His is the beatitude Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. For him, justice has nothing to do with an application of written laws
or morals learnt. It presents itself to his instinct with the exigence and urgency of a bodily need, of
hunger and thirst. Free from covetousness and therfore from anxiety, patient in tribulation, in labour
and fatigue, equable in good or bad fortune, the hero endures everything except unfairness. Then he
flies into the great anger of Justice which is indignation, anger whithout sin, divine inspiration which
transforms the sacrificial lamb into a fighting lion, an archangel wielding a sword.
Or at least so it seems to this simple, upright, uncomplicated soul. But something has gone awry.
Something has got mixed up and gone wrong.
What?
He has mistaken the enemy.
But we shall come back to that.
43.
The Heros Mistake
Now, said Mahomet, the day after his victory, the Holy War is ended, or at least the Little Holy
War, for the great, the real war is the one each of us wages inwardly without hatred of man and without
bloodshed.
Sublime words. It is a pity that the Prophet Hero did not make them the summit of his preaching, a
pity that in his own life and that of his adepts, the Little pretendedly Holy War had a bigger place than
the Great, real one.
The Heros mistake is to think he is attacking Evil when he is attacking the wicked, and that by
killing a few bad men, and then a few more, he has got rid of Evil. Another mistake is to take his enemy
for a wicked man and an incarnation of Evil, whereas that can only be half true, if not entirely untrue.
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44.
The Fall of the Angel
The inner disposition of the Hero remains unchanged when the hand that offers him in sacrifice
is replaced by that of the executioner. Instead of being his Glorification, his suffering then becomes a
Ceremony of Expiation, faithful to the primordial Rites. Proof of this is the achievement of the Perfect
Hero, which was His death on the Cross. All martyrdom is a share in the suffering on the cross, the
legitimate inheritance of the heroic Tradition.
But when the Sacrifice is replaced by Combat, everything changes and even turns into its inverse,
even when the combat is justified, even when, what is more, justice is preserved in combat by respect of
the strictest rules: combat with equal arms, on flat ground, in an enclosure; courtesy and respect of the
adversary; refusal, at the risk of ones life, to resort to trickery or even to take advantage of a favourable
accident. Which demands a great mastery of anger and of fear, precludes hatred and baseness, and
makes of the noblest of arts the most beautiful of games.
Nevertheless, there is a wide gulf between a religious ceremony and a game, between an offering
and a thrust of the sword.
All the outward show of chivalrous courtesy is a sham. It is simulated play, a game of strength and
skill, but a game with life and death, a forbidden game. It is true that the opponents vanity is spared
base insult, but one must face the fact that sticking a sword into his guts and spitting a pistol-load into
his face is already a rather regrettable lack of respect, and very unmannerly besides.
In religious justification of war, a strong heathen and barbarian tang lingers on.
Joshuas massacres, Mahomets frenzied rides, the battle in the Gita are above all lessons taught
through pictures. The epic is always exalting and magnificent, but war is a woeful feat.
As symbolic play, war portrays the universal combat between good and evil. But in the clash of
nations, the picture is too crudely coloured to be representative. A picture painted with blood, smeared
rather than painted, not so much a picture as a dirty stain.
War for the sake of justice is unjustifiable. The God wills it and the Gott mit uns! have been
contradicted in exemplary fashion by fact, for God does not at all like to have His will thus disposed of
or to have His preference appropriated.
The will of God is expressed in the absolute commandments. Whoever brandishes the sword to do
Gods will ought to remember the commandment, Thou shalt not kill.
The man armed by divine justice who rushes upon another man to put him to death has already
judged him evil to the point of being Evil incarnate and therefore deserving of death. He has forgotten
that it is written: Judge not.
It is also written, Love they neigbour as thyself and as ye would that men should do to you, do
ye also to them likewise (Luke VI, 31).
If the will of God has veered like the wind, if by special inspiration and exception it has ordered
you to do the contrary of the absolute commandments, the fact is without precedent and you must prove
it to us irrefutably.
But can the make-believe be made to last outside romances of the Round Table or Tournaments for
the sake of a Ladys beauty? On battlefields and in conquered cities, even in heroic times and under the
banner of the most noble causes, every atrocity has been commited. It even seems that the more just the
cause, the more it justifies abomination.
Besides, as soon as you have justified one war, it is just to justify others.
217
If holy warfare is justified, it will not be difficult to sanctify plunder of all kinds, seeing that Gods
will is too great a mystery to lend itself to discussion.
If civilizing warfare is justified, the task of machine-gunning the whole world into civilization if
far from being accomplished.
If defensive warfare is justified, you must immediately attack your neighbour, who is a perpetual
threat to your frontiers. In this way you will acquire territory which will serve as a rampart and a glacis
for your defence. Afterwards, when, in the course of time, the conquered country has become yours,
you will need other lands to serve as defence for your defences. The more frontiers you have to defend,
the more enemies you will have threatening you and the more you will have to forestall attack.
From which it follows, says Aristotle, that war is a natural means of acquisition, for hunting is
part of that art. War is thus a hunt for men made to obey but who refuse slavery. It seems that nature
marks such hostilities with the seal of justice. Here is the kind of speculation in conformity with nature,
that is part of Economy (Polit. I, 5).
Now we are a long way from Holy war, a long way from the Epic. Now we are in History. You
remember the robber brought before Alexander the Great to be judged. The Great One asked him,
Why do you carry on this sorry trade? And the Little Man answered, I do it to make my wretched
living. But you who have need of nothing, why do you do it?
This ambiguity between robbery on a grand scale and the Quest of the Holy Grail, this fall into the
Conquista from the see-saw of exporting the Cross and importing Gold, these oscillations between the
immortal principles of the Revolution and petrol, cotton and rubber, these clever conjuring tricks with
Honour and Interest, best lend themselves to the kind of speculation, in conformity with nature, that is
part of Economy and which is nothing other than the Science-of-Good-and-Evil, whose theorems are
linked in an irrefutable chain and whose end is: death.
45.
Extreme Ignominy and the Return of the Hero
I remember seeing on a wall in the Boulevard St. Michel, on the day of the liberation of Paris,
scrawled among the Lorraine crosses and the threats to Petain, the following inscription:
Long live American material!
O Roland of Roncevaux! O Jeanne of the Lily! O Minstrel Boy!
And I thought, Time of Extreme Ignominy!
In the course of these victories of the Mass and of Material, of these wars that consist in cleaning up operations, of these industrial undertakings of massive destruction, the age-old lie wears thin,
bombast falls silent, the epic deflates and lies flat.
And since violence now shows itself, as it is, having discarded all semblance of honour, since it
has thrown off its mask and its veil and exhibits its obscene ugliness and its overwhelming vileness somebody had to save honour by purifying it of all violence, somebody had to reaffirm the goodness of
God, the Worth of Mankind, the Power of the Justice that is Nonviolence or Self-sacrifice. Against the
monsters of the epoch, somebody had to arise and restore the figure of the Primordial Hero.
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46.
Three Historical Miracles
There are not many unblemished heroes, not many who have not shed blood, who have shed no
other blood than their own.11
Gandhi accomplished an achievement equal in grandeur to that of the greates conquerors, dominators and legislators on earth, but how much higher in nobility and purity.
He came at his hour, marked his epoch, took his place in the current of history. But he did not follow
that current. Some blamed him for it, others cleared him of the accusation. He should be glorified for
it.
Never in history, said one of his contrdictors has a nation freed itself from its oppressors without
taking up arms.
Very well, he answered simply, then we shall write a new history. Twelve years later, it was
written and done.
He once said, to believe that what has never been seen cannot exist is to cast discredit on human
dignity.
History relates with scrupulous exactness how Kings live, and how they killed one another, but if
nothing else had taken place in the world, the world would have ceased to exist a long time ago. . .
Elsewhere, he says, History is a list of interruptions that have occurred in the natural course of
things. . .
True, Gandhi did not heal lepers or walk on the waters, but if by miracle one means an extraordinary feat which manifests the power of God through a man then three miracles must be attributed to
him, three historical miracles which are the whole of his own history.
The liberation of a nation without bloodshed.
A social revolution without revolt.
The stopping of a war.
47.
A National Liberation
Does the little Hindu really think he is going to soften the hearts of the English with his fasting?
people used to say laughingly.
In 1932, an Indian said to me The English leave India? Theyd rather leave the British Isles!
Now the same people say, So theyve gone, have they? Well, whats surprising about that? They
left because it suited them. They occupied the country for business purposes only. There was only a
handful of them and they had to subjugate uncountable millions of people. Gandhis fasts have nothing
to do with it. Thats not what they were afraid of, but the trouble and the sabotage when he was in prison.
Besides, have they really left, is India really free? And they laugh again, for they are very inclined to
laugh, serious people. When they can no longer laugh at something, they laugh at its contrary. They are
and always have been right. Everything has an explanation they can laugh at.
Yes, the liberation of India was an illusion. It solved no problems but posed them all. But do you
think England is really free? or France? No-one is more aware than Gandhi that changes of regime and
11
Savorgnan de Brazzas tomb bears this epitaph: Here lies a hero pure of his brothers blood.
219
decor change nothing. No-one knows better than he that Swaraj or Independence is Raj or Royalty of
the Self. Mastery of oneself is the only principle of Liberty (which raises the problem from the social
onto the spiritual plane). Political Freedom and National Independence are negative and imaginary. The
only real freedom is that of each man in his innermost depths. The good to be expected of action is to
have done it well; To the fruit of the action, one must not be attached, says the Gita. Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might says Ecclesiastes, for that is thy portion in this life. The
result is in Gods hands.
Yes, the English left India because it suited them to do so. But Gandhi created the conditions in
which it did not suit them to stay. He never believed that setting oneself free consisted in making a noise
in the street. One is not independent unless one knows how to make what one needs. The solution is
not to protest against occupation but to learn to do without the occupier. As soon as the exploited refuse
to be the accomplices of the exploiter in covetousness, business slackens and one has to close shop.
But the Empire of India was something other than a shop. And the English Nation, proud above all
others, did not give it up without difficulty. They left because they were forced to. By what force? That
is what needs to be explained.
For the English did not retreat vanquished. They left after a great and difficult victory. They
left with all their troops and all their arms, without fighting. And their retreat was neither defeat nor
cowardly flight, but a necessary renunciation which does them honour. The noblest act in the history
of England12 .
It always suits a nation which is oppressing another to leave. It is the best and most honourable
thing it can do.It must of course understand where its honour lies, for it is tempted to perservere in its
evil.
And once again, it was Gandhi who enabled the English to understand that they could not maintain
their hold without losing face.
In this lies the force of non-violence: it forces you to reflect, forces you to understand, and that is
why it is called Satyagraha or the Force of Truth.
48.
Satyagraha
One refusal cures a hundred ills says an Indian proverb.
Plutarch relates that the inhabitants of Asia fell into bondage because they did not know how to
utter a word of one syllable: No.
The people, observes Mirabeau, need only fold its arms to become formidable.
Satyagraha is the formidable revolution which consists in folding ones arms.
Since the regime has discredited itself, either by imposing on us an unjust law or by violation of its
own law, the time has come to show it that it has lost its reason for being.
To start work again, we shall wait till it has become reasonable. Satyagraha usually begins with
Hartal a national day of fasting, mourning, prayer and self-recollection before entering into direct
action.
The action of saying No! and doing it. I mean doing No!
Then the Citizens General Strike begins. Not only do the workers leave the factories, and the
12
See Vinoba or The New Pilgrimage.
220
offices, but so do the managers, the owners. Magistrates shun the lawcourts, teachers the schools,
shopkeepers their shops. Everything closes down and stops. More and more people resign.
Meanwhile, citizens and farmers get together and organize the food supplies. Families arrange for
the children to be taught in one or other of their homes. People at law find an arbitrator to reconcile
them. The obvious begins to dawn: we can, if need be, do without the government, but the government
cannot do without us.
It is obvious that if the movement were unanimous, no regime could resist for even a day, but
in every courageous undertaking, violent or not, the number of volunteers is always restricted. If,
therefore, things are slow to start, the thin edge of the non-violent wedge can be pushed in further by
deliberate law-breaking or civil disobedience. Disobedience, but civil, that is to say, disciplined and
moral. Every care must be taken not to harm the life, the goods, the honour or the peace of others,
whoever they may be, including our persecutors who must be left free to carry on their occupations
(and their persecution).
One can break either a law considered unjust and odious, as was the case in the Salt Walk, or every
law that is not a Moral Law.
There, for example, the notice says No Passage. It is not immoral to pass, so let us do it. Let us
pass in a crowd and block the passage.
Here, there is no notice saying It is forbidden to sit down. These are the tram-rails. So let us sit
down on the tram-rails. Let us lie down on them and stay ther for three days.
Here, there is no notice saying Keep Out. These are the prison gates. Let us camp in front of
them and if they drive us away, let us suggest that we are quite comfortable but would be more so inside.
It is a matter of having ourselves beaten or thrown into jail by all the means permissible to an
honourable citizen, and preferably in great numbers, and all together. Penal Law is founded on fear of
punishment. It is equipped for the pursuit of people who hide and flee. When people rush to meet the
bludgeoners, the jailers and the executioners, the law is surprised and disconcerted. Once the prisons
are full, the only thing left to do is to open them again. . .
But whats all the noise? The commandant of the fortress is red with rage. Its Gandhi again, that
native, half monkey! Put him in prison and have done with him!
It is quickly done. As quickly as a fish darts at a worm only to discover that it has a hook in its
entrails. Sometimes Power pounces thus on an inoffensive and defenceless citizen, in every way, just
like a worm.
A week later, a glittering car flying the Viceroys flag stops at the prison gates. Mr. Gandhi gets
into it, for during this time he has become Mr. He is received at the Palace to agree on conditions for
the resumption of normal life. The conditions are those he fixed to begin with. They seem modest,
considering the importance of the nationwide movement which has astonished everybody, including
himself. The government would be disposed to grant him more. But it is not gallant to take advantage
of the circumstances and the willingness of an adversary. One does not yield until one has obtained
what one asked for, but one does not ask for more simply because resistance has weakened.
And so on, from jail to jail until Independence.
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49.
A Social Revolution
The Third and greatest of Gandhis achievements was the Redemption of the Pariahs. The intrinsic
kindness of the action is more unmistakable, its success more astonishing and, in the strong sense of
the word, it is more of a miracle.
People who do not know India, especially Westerners, are not in a position to see this. Indeed,
unless one is acquainted with the law of Manu, and the religious rites, observances and customs of the
country, it is not possible to perceive the root of the problem or its depth and singularity.
A common mistake is to believe the Hindu castes to be social classes, and to see the problem as
one of distributive justice. But economy has nothing to do with it. Certain authors, in their ignorance
go so far as to attribute the rejection of the pariahs to racial prejudice13 .
But the Pariah cannot be likened to the slave of Antiquity, nor to the American negro, nor to the
serfs of the Middle Ages nor to the proletarians of the Industrial Era.
The pariah is a person who has been excommunicated. He is the object of a curse, a taboo, what is
more, of a hereditary taboo.
His rejection is clearly written in the law of Manu which governs daily life and family morality.
Caste is not a social problem, but the social consequence of a religious belief. And Gandhi, whose
mission was to solve social problems in conformity with Religious Truth was faced with this Sacred
Monster and had to tackle it.
He risked much more than his life. He risked falling under the curse himself, being cut off from
his nearest kin, his dearest friends and from his people. That no Council of Princes of the Priests and
Pharisees met to strike him down is another miracle!
What frequently escapes notice is that this patriot, unique of his kind, did not clash nearly so
often with the enemies of his mother-country as with his compatriots, that this Hindu, faithful to Rama
until his very last breath, never permitted himself to make the slightest criticism of what Christians or
Mahometans hold sacred, but never ceased to denounce the superstitions, the flaws and the vices that
blemish the Brahmanic religion, his own. Judgement, like charity, begins at home. It is the first rule of
non-violent justice.
***
This rule explains the necessary link between the Liberation of India and the Redemption of the
Pariah. Have I made myself clear? And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors says the Lords
Prayer. Have I at least made myself clear to those who recite it twice a day? We shall be judged as we
judge others and we deserve to be treated as we treat others.
So let us be sure, before complaining of being trampled on by the foreigner, let us be sure that we
are not doing the same thing to our brothers. We Indians have become the Pariahs of the whole world
which is perfectly just so long as there are Pariahs in our own country. Let us not seek the cause of our
wretchedness in the wickedness of our enemies, but accuse our own sins!
13
I have dealt with these unwarranted theories in Return to the Source, chapter IV.
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50.
Revolutionary Originality
Every revolution starts by flourishing the new broom that is going to sweep everything clean, and
every revolution seems a servile imitation of the same model. Whether the revolution is that of the
Roman Plebs or of the London people, that of the Maillotins in Paris or that of the Ciompi in Florence,
that of Crotone in the third century before Christ or that of Cuba in the twentieth century after, each
repeats and copies the others in triumph as in oppression.
Gandhis revolution alone bears the hallmark of originality. It was a revolution that went contrary
to the others. It resorted neither to the same instruments nor to the same incentives.
First and foremost, it shed no blood, which is far from common.
It took place without revolt.
What?
Yes, without revolt.
Without hatred, without grievances and demands, without revenge, without executions, without
persecution.
Yes, without.
51.
A Revolution Contrary to All Others

The Pariahs of India have never been known to revolt.
The unintelligible proscription that had weighed on them for thousands of years seemed to have
put them under a spell. In their abjection, they had come to constitute a sort of counter-civilization, a
counter-morality and a counter-religion some idea of which may be gathered from our own Witches
Sabbath and Black Mass. But Gandhi did not use their rancour or their anger as an instrument of
vengeance against those who had repelled them. He shamed the privileged with their hardness of heart,
their murderous and degrading indifference. Generous men and women from all castes devoted themselves, as the risk of losing their rank, to the rehabilitataion of the Untouchables. Singulary dedicated
were the Brahmans and Sons of Princes, who created schools, hospitals and villages for them, and in
the face of infinitely more difficulty, obtained their admission into parish schools, public hospitals and
the already existing villages.
But the last step was to introduce them into the Temple, the Holy of Holies, so that the annulment
of their excommunication might be consecrated.
And whereas, everywhere else in the world, revolutions end in religious persecution, this one culminated in the return to God of those called Pariahs and whose name from then on, was to be Harijans
(Children of the Lord).
52.
His Supreme Work
As for the third miracle, it is not only a rare and marvelous event but a unique fact of which History,
to my knoledge, reveals no example14 .
14
Except, perhaps, that of Nicolas de Flue.
223
I shall be brief, because there is more to be said about it than I can say. Everything that is said
in this book might serve as a commentary on it. I leave it to the reader to find out the relationship for
himself, think about it and weigh it up himself.
This is what the New History records:
Two peoples15 , intermingled in spite of themselves on the same land for ten centuries and animated
by deepseated, and it must be confessed, religious hatred of each other, when at last rid of their common
oppresser who had muzzled them while baiting them against each other, free at last to massacre each
other wholeheartedly and tear each other to pieces to their hearts content, stop because one man has
said, I lay down my life, I give my life, I offer it for your peace. I shall take no more food until you
have made peace. Now I wait, suffer and pray.
And that life is so heavy with merit, so loaded with love, so cherished by his children, the nations
of India, that it acts as a counterweight to the age-old hatred of a multitude.
And the peace is concluded.
53.
The Force of Justice or Nonviolence

The Hero is the defender of justice by force.
The Pure Hero is the defender of justice by the force of justice.
The Force of Justice is the correct definition of nonviolence.
54.
Justice, or Reason Enacted
Need Justice be defined? Even the supidest of men, when exposed to calumny or unfair treatment
shows by his resentment that he knows what justice is.
In fact, it is as simple as two and two make four.
For two and two to make four, one must be equal to one.
Unity and equality are the common foundation of moral certainties and mathematical truths. The
linear straightness and rectitude have parallel meanings.
That one is equal to one raises no difficulties for anybody, but if the one is myself?
As soon as this enormous unity comes into account, the arithmetic goes wrong.
To go on admitting, in thought and in deed, that one is equal to one, I have to force my nature.
But if it is one of the axioms of justice that there is no difference to be made between myself and
anyone else, and if I must force myself to observe justice, then it follows that I must also force others
to observe it.
This explains why Justice is nearly always accompanied by the use of force.
Justice is the substance of all virtues. Every virtue without justice, love without justice, courage
without justice becomes abberration and wrong.
Justice is the substance of duty. It is just to fulfil ones professional duty but our first duty is to
15
Hindus and Moslems.
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ask ourselves whether our profession is justified16 . We have the duty to obey our leaders provided their
authority is legitimate, but that does not dispense us from the duty of asking ourselves whether the order
they give us is just. It is our duty to submit to the law of our country, but above all, to ask ourselves if
that law is just. For it may very well have been imposed by a tyrant or a conqueror, by an impostor or
by profiteers, or be due only to superstition or to mistakes in the past. Then our first duty is perhaps to
disobey openly, or to attack the law in some other way.
Whatever the case may be, our first duty is to observe justice, and our second, not to tolerate its
violation.
If the witness of an injustice turns his head the other way on the pretence that it is none of his
business or that discretion is called for, of impassibility, is nothing but a coward. His non-intervention,
far from clearing him, puts him, on the contrary, into the camp of the unjust.
Because of this, life is a perpetual battle and Holy War, mans highest duty.
55.
The Two Forces

Justice holds scales in her left hand and a sword in her right. Justice without Force is not Justice.
But what Force? and is there only one?
There are two forces in the world, the force of the sword and the force of the spirit. The force of
the spirit will always end by triumphing over the force of the sword.
If you think the saying is one of Saint Francis or one of Ramakrishnas, you are mistaken. It is
one of Napoleons.
The truth of the saying was demonstrated by someone else: a Hero pure of his brothers blood. The
translation of Satyagraha is: Force of the Spirit.
56.
Simple Questions
Yes, but is it by the force of the spirit that you are going to keep thieves out of the house?
It is by the force of the spirit that you are going to stop some brute ill-treating a defenceless child
or an innocent animal?
It is by the force of the spirit that you are going to repel an invader or overthrow a Despot?
And what if you are attacked some night at a street corner is it by the force of the spirit that you
are going to defend yourself?
Let us beware of hasty generalization and irresponsible answers17 .
16
In Chapter II we pointed out how many honourable professions cannot be justified and in Chapter III how many fortunes
are based on wrongdoing.
17
These questions are to some extent answered in the three chapters of the authors Introduction to Inner Life which deal
with non-violence.
225
57.
The Great Unnoticed Scandal
But let us see where refusal to answer the question leads us, or where we are led by doggedly
answering, as people have done for centuries, that there is no other check to injustice than fear and
coercion. Quite simply, we are led to resign ourselves to an age-old scandal to which habit alone has
made us blind.
The scandal is that justice, the virtue of virtues and the duty of duties, is more bloodthirsty, more
cruel and more evildoing than the most furious passions or the most barbarian frenzies, and that no
crime makes as many victims or does such damage.
If these words surprise you, go and visit the museum of instruments of torture. Take a good look
at the pincers, the hooks, the ropes, the fetters, the wheel, the brand, the garrotte, the chains and balls,
the boiler and the stake, the cangue and the gibbet and that even more atrocious denunciation of mens
justice: the Cross.
Prison cells and iron bars, graves and charnelhouses of the living!
More fertile than the genius of lovers or poets, admire the refinement of the torturer, the prudence
of the executioner!
How different from murders vulgar stab of a knife are these wounds inflicted with measure and art
for the sole satisfaction of Justice!
O masterpiece of the Science-of-Good-and-Evil! All the long-continued and concentrated spite of
the good, finds its perfect expression in the high works of Justice!
58.
The Handling of the Law
But for the spirit of Profit as for the spirit of Domination, what an instrument of choice the legal
apparatus is!
How simple-minded, how silly those thieves are who take the art of stealing for a manual trade! It
is a mental exercise.
In one clean sweep, and without the slightest risk, thanks to a good lawsuit, one can carry off whole
estates, country mansions, mines and fortunes.
To tie ones neighbours hands while one hits him on the head, there is nothing like the Law.
Laws are the keys and levers of Power and Wealth. Whoever knows how to handle them is above
blame. He holds the knife by the handle.
59.
Beware of Virtue!
All preachers of morals put us on our guard against vice, but who shall protect us from your virtues,
O good, respectable citizens so well provided with goods!
It was not the thieves or the murderers, not the libertines or the drunkards, not the prostitutes or the
procurers that Jesus-Christ condemned and damned.
To the sinner, what does he say? He heals him and says Go and sin no more, lest worse thing
come to thee (John V, 4).
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Those he damns and on whose head he pours a torrent of curses are the Pharisians, in other words,
the Justified-by-the-Law.
For these there is no forgiveness, for the good reason that they will never ask for it.
And who condemned Jesus (and what is more, crucified him between two thieves) who but the
good respectable people, the magistrates, the judges, the priests, the governor, the king, the soldiers and
other servants of the law?
60.
The Knowledge of Sin

By the Law says St. Paul is the knowledge of sin.
And he goes on, Not that the law is evil. . .
Do you understand now?
Then beware of your virtues!
61.
A Lesson in Arithmetic
Let us come back to arithmetic, to two and two make four.
However, I learnt at school that one should not mutiply carrots by cabbages.
Two forks, plus three elephants, make how many locomotives?
And now answer: One ham stolen, plus a punch in the shopkeepers stomach, makes how many
months of imprisonment?
Here is another one, since you are good at sums. They have caught a man who killed another one.
What will they do to him?
They will cut his head off.
Right: That makes how many dead men?
Does 1 + 1 make 2, or, as everybody seems to believe, does it make O? Have you repaired the evil
with the punishment? Or have you doubled it?
It is in dreams that one does sums like this. People reason thus, with the utmost gravity, in madhouses.
62.
The Complement of the Law

It is not by an evil that one stops evil, but by a good. Such is the ancient law says Buddha.
To kill a man for the good of the world does not do the world good. To offer oneself in sacrifice
for the world is to do good says Lao-Tseu.
And Gandhi, We have to sacrifice ourselves. It is cowardly to kill others. Whom do we think we
are setting free by murder?
What man, when faced with an evil, asks himself not what evil he can do the evildoer but what
good he can oppose to such a wrong?
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And since justice requires equality of measure: what good is equal to such an evil?
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hate, let me put love.
Where there is discord, let me put union.
Where there is offence, let me put forgiveness.
Where there is despair, let me put hope.
Where there is doubt, let me put faith.
Where there is darkness, let me put light.
Where there is sadness, let me put joy18 .
For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love them that love them.
And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
But love ye your enemies and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return (Luke VVI).
The New Testament was written one thousand eight hundred years ago exclaims Henry Thoreau,
but where is the legislator with enough wisdom and talent to profit by the light it sheds on the science
of legislation?
63.
Justice and War or the Crime of Virtue
It is not thieves or murderers or libertines or drunkards or prostitutes or procurers who prepare and
conduct war.
They have not enough virtues.
They say the best robbers make the worst soldiers.
It is not with faults, weaknesses and vices that one can succeed in doing so much damage.
It is not with anger, hatred or any bad feeling that one wages war. It is with strong virtues and above
all a keen sense of justice. It is the fury to be right that envenoms warfare and heightens its ferocity.
A great deal of courage, devotion, discipline, orderliness, knowledge, zeal, skill, promptitude,
ardour, perserverance, patience, prudence and boldness, trustworthiness and genius is needed to achieve
such magnificent devastation.
Decent people are required, brim-full of high virtues, to succeed in producing more murder, arson
and atrocity than all the criminals in the world.
64.
The Sting of Death is Sin
It is by faithfully keeping treaties, alliances and ones word of honour, by the logic of the Scienceof-Good-and-Evil, by speculation on interests and prestige, (in which good intentions play no less a
part than bad ones) on duties and rights, that war is made inevitable.
It is by prying into the atom, by nosing into interstellar space, by tinkering with disintegration, by
long patience and brilliant discoveries, by twisting and deviating the laws of nature for any purpose it
18
Prayer of St. Francis.
228
may serve while pretexting to seek the truth that they have ended up by making the effects of inevitable
warfare unlimited and irremediable.
Death as the end of all justifications of violence is the finest of demonstrations ad absurdum.
65.
An Act of Hope
But look! Stark, iron-grey, the almond tree has suddenly burst into bloom! The buds are pushing
out, green or rose coloured.
O human brother, look quickly, look quickly at the sky while it is still blue, run and touch the earth
before it melts!
Hurry, before all these decent, intelligent and diligent people have finished their duties, carried
out their good intentions, exercised their talents and their qualities, achieved their exploits and their
exploitations.
But so long as there is still one fig-tree that risks a bud, hope!
66.
An Act of Faith
Non-violence is founded on two acts of faith: one in God, the other in man.
This act of faith in God, or to be more precise, this corollary of faith, may be stated thus:
God is absolutely just and at the same time All-Powerful.
Therefore there is a Power of Justice, and non-violence is that power, the Power of God. (Note that
although All-Powerful, He forces nobody to love Him or to do good.)
Therefore: I must force nobody either, nor make use of my strength.
Putting non-violence into practice is not a matter of developing ones strength, ones virtues or
talents, ones intellect or learning or gifts19 ; it is not a matter of asserting ones personality or of
upholding ones opinions.
On the contrary, one must endeavour to empty oneself of the ego and become a channel for the
Power of Justice. Putting all ones strength into being a strong channel is already enough.
When I use brute force in defence of a just cause, I am using the same force as the wicked use,
but more logically, in defence of their wickedness. Obviously, I am unaware that there is a force which
springs from the very justice of my cause.
As a result of this ignorance I intervene and compromise myself. I take a roundabout way and
resort to a gross and hasty expedient to arrive at the result which seems to me the most just, choosing
the lesser of two evils. I am justified if there are no other means at my disposal, if, caught unawares
and forced by necessity, I can find none better.
It is already noble, says Gandhi, to defend ones good, ones honour and religion at the point
of the sword, but how much more noble to do so without harming ones aggressor. . .
What is cowardly, unnatural and criminal is to leave them at the mercy of the violent.
19
These things are not to be despised or neglected. If a man is dedicated, everything he needs is given him too, as experience
proves, and everything is of service to him, sometimes even his weaknesses, his affliction or his infirmity.
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If there is no other choice than between violence and cowardice, then violence is better.
But one must do all one can to free oneself from the false dilemma of this choice, for violence and
cowardice alike have sequels which are links in the chains that keep our world bound in the fatality of
the Scourges.
Brutal means which inflict pain, frustration or death, can never be looked upon as neutral. They
are intrinsically wrong. That they are the lesser evil remains to be proved. But if the rule of justice is to
render to the evildoer an equal evil how can one maintain that it is lesser? Moreover, brutal means
are hazardous by nature, inseparable from excitement and excess. It is blameworthy not to foresee that
they will have unforseeable results.
Threats and intimidation are just as bad. Trickery and manoeuvring are of a lower species. Seduction and corruption, in appearance gentle, are worse still, and however good the intentions or saintly
the cause, they bear the mark of infamy.
Resorting to evil means is not resisting evil but participating in it and adding to it. It is also forging
a link in the fatality of the Scourges.
If I oppose the unjust with their own weapons, on the same ground and for the same stake, I am
not to be distinguished from them in the fray, and I cannot ask God to discern my cause from that of
the unrighteous man, to lure me away from the man of iniquity and fraud20 . If I set up as a defender of
Justice and resort to dubious means, then I am adding imposture to injustice.
One of the strongest elements of Gandhis teaching was his refutation of the adage that the end
justifies the means. Between the end and the means there is the same relationship as between the acorn
and the oak. Just as a bramble has never been seen to produce grapes, bad means cannot be expected
to serve a good cause. If I defend justice, I must seize the sword of justice. But what is this sword? In
what does the swordsmanship consist? What is its efficacity? Where does its victory lie? This is where
we come to the act of faith in man.
The second act of faith, the act of faith in man, depends on the first, just as man depends on his
Creator, Whose image and likeness he unwittingly bears.
Therefore, he unwittingly has truth in himself and is accessible to truth.
Two and two make four to the Frenchman as to the Bantu, to the Papuan as to the Chinese, to the
good as to the bad, to the enemy as to the friend.
If the justice of my cause is a clear to me as two and two make four, it should not be difficult to get
my enemy to see it.
At this point, Gandhi makes a statement which might sound daring and naive, if one did not know
it to be the fruit of half a century of experimentation, in which each experiment was carried out to its
extreme conclusion.
A man who finds himself forced to admit to himself that he is in the wrong cannot go on fighting.
Therefore:
My enemy, wicked brute that he is, vicious, ambitious, miserly, cruel and sly, coldly calculating,
bitterly jealous, treacherous, clever at quibbling, despotic, ill-bred and double-dealing my enemy is
somebody who is mistaken.
From this certainty spring three important consequences:
The first is that it is my duty to open his eyes.
20
Introit to Mass.
230
By doing so, I shall put an end to the struggle and bring about my own good, but also my enemys
good, since it is not good for him to be mistaken.
The second: that contempt and hatred are beside the point.
The third: that conflict has put a link between my enemy and myself like kinship, an obligation
like that of a doctor towards a patient or of a father towards his child.
Right away this puts me into a superior position whereas I am the victim trodden underfoot.
But this does not imply any pretention to any superiority on my part: neither a doctor nor a father
entertains such foolishness.
67.
The Target of Non-violence

Where should I hit the enemy,
In the centre.
What, his head?
No!
His chest then?
No!
His belly?
No!
Where then?
In the centre: his conscience.
68.
The Touchstone of Non-violence

How can you tell that a man is non-violent?
Is it because he is gentle, amiable, affable, indulgent, patient, kind to inferiors, serene, smiling, and
gives you his blessing?
No, because hypocrites are also like that.
Is it because he is calm, relaxed, detached and even-tempered?
No, because the indifferent are also like that.
Because he is self-possessed and can keep his anger under control?
A polite man-of-the-world does the same.
A non-violent man is one whose tactics are wholly aimed at clarifying the situation and touching
the conscience.
In conflict (for that is where non-violence reveals itself: one can speak of non-violence only where
violence would be natural if not legitimate, and one speaks only when it solves problems which usually
require the use of force), in conflict, then, what he is after is not to escape the enemys anger or to
awaken his pity or to get round him cleverly, but to make the situation perfectly clear and to come to an
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understanding with him.
That being his purpose, hard words may be as good as gentle ones, and he may have to resort to
spirited action that startles the adversary, or to stinging sarcasm, or to the use of imprecation as a form
of warning and even, at the limit, to his fists - yes, his fists, provided that their punch is as free of
violence as an operation carried out by a surgeon for the purpose of healing.
69.
Love of the Enemy

And what does love your enemy mean?
Does it consist in saying to him, I love you, I love you, come hither that I may kiss you?
Or in dreaming of him as one lies in bed, like a girl of her lover? Or in sending him bunches of
flowers and bags of sweets?
To love somebody is to wish him good and to do him good. The first good to be done to ones enemy
is to deliver him from his enmity. But charity begins at home and one must first deliver oneself of all
ill-feeling towards him. This requires the great courage of love, a conversion and painful separation,
for we love our hates as much as our loves, and sometimes more, and we are attached to our sorrows as
strongly as to our pleasures.
But also, what a reward, when, all passion spent, the one-time enemies shake hands and look at
each other through their tears. Neither the love of lovers nor the friendship of friends can produce an
emotion as profound or strong or fine.
70.
Non-violence, Love and Charity
Since we have spoken of love of the enemy, we must do what we might have begun by, i.e. determine the relationship between non-violence and love.
Gandhi on several occasions said, non-violence, or love. In Return to the Source, I wrote, The
non-violence practiced and taught by Gandhi differs in nothing from Christian charity. In The New
Pilgrimage I withdrew this affirmation. I believe that one should be precise concerning serious matters
like this upon which wishful thinking so readily seizes, turning everything into an insipid mixture.
The two things are quite distinct. I am not saying opposite or separate; I would even say that they
are necessarily linked and united, but by nature they are distinct. And there are even three things, for
which there are fortunately three words: love, charity, non-violence.
To avoid confusing non-violence with love, it suffices to consider that love implies violence almost
as surely as does its opposite, hatred. From the outset, love implies hate, for they are alternative poles
of the same feeling.
If you love someone, you will necessarily hate those who hate her and wish her ill. And every
love has its reverse side of passionate hatred. It is the material of novels and drama and the reason
for which passion leads so naturally to crime and suicide. Just as every object that reflects light has in
shadow-side, so every love casts its shadow of hatred. Whether its shadow-side is equal to the light it
reflects is hard to say. Almost always, the shadow outmeasures the lit side. Sometimes the ray of love
touches only a point, while the cone of shadow stretches to the horizon.
This is even more noticeable when the love is a jealous one. For then, one hates not only those who
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hate the loved one, but also those who love her. And in the end one hates even the loved one if she does
not hate the latter enough.
But furious and dramatic love is not the only kind to have a reverse side. Simple attachment to
ones family and friends, the most common and lukewarm of affections, has a reverse side which is not
hatred but something that can have the same mortal effects: indifference.
Indifference is always very superficial. When indifference treads on our toes through heedlessness,
when we encounter it accidentally or when it unwitttingly upsets our plans, we detest it and shout with
rage. Indifference is a thin crust of ice over a bottomless pit of latent hatred, in addition to the fact that
indifference brings about more suffering and death than hatred does, acquiescing in every wrong and
evil.
Non-violence cannot therefore be derived from love; it does not at all result from it naturally, it is
not of the same nature, and it is doubtful whether it belongs to Nature.
Non-violence springs from something that is nearly always opposed to love: justice and respect.
That is why its maxims and its laws are based on the morals and the honour of the Hero.
Here two questions of capital importance arise. Is there such a thing as love without a reverse side
of hatred? Can love and justice be reconciled?
71.
Charity
There is indeed a love that has no reverse side of hatred. Its name is quite distinct: Charity. That is
has no shadow-side might be its definition, for this is what distinguishes it from all natural love.
Another distinctive feature is that it is not a feeling. It has not the changeable and passive character
of feeling.
If it were a sentiment, it could not be the object of a commandment. Now it is the second precept
of the first of the commandments (Mark XII, 28) on which hang all the law and the prophets. One
cannot say Grieve or Rejoice except in exhortation. One cannot say Feel, I command you to.
Therefore if thou shalt love is a commandment, the love must be an act of the will and of virtue. A
difficult virtue, and I would say almost impossible to nature. A virtue which is at the same time a grace,
almost supernatural, a theological virtue to speak canonically, and no term could be more precise, for it
means flowing from the knowledge of God.
Actually, charity is love converted and we saw that conversion means turning the other way.
But, people will say, isnt loving the simplest thing there is? Simple indeed, and charity
expresses itself quite simply thus: Love thy neighbour as thyself. Which is perfectly simple to say
and to understand.
But simple does not mean easy.
The simplest things are the most difficult to those whom serpentine knowledge has complicated.
And who is my neigbour? asks the doctor of Law. The answer is very simple: Anybody:
whoever is there.
And now, do it. Love him if you can!
No, it isnt easy. Indeed it is not! He hasnt always a very beautiful face, my neighbour, and
experience tells me that often he has a very ugly one.
And if it is for her beautiful face that I love her, for her lovely eyes and her pretty curls and her
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strawberry mouth that I love the girl who is also my neighbour, is it out of pure charity? Serious doubts
arise concerning the theological aspect of the matter.
I would say that charity is pure when it is difficult, and that it begins with the neighbour who is
nothing to me, who has nothing pleasing about him and nothing to give me in return. It is for that
reason, and not for the sake of social reform, that the saint turns to the poor and wants them served first.
It is for that, and not out of ambition for distant conquest and annexion to the Church that the
missionary leaves his home and his dear ones to fly to the help of the Tartar or the Zulu, for in order to
love our neighbour, we must stop everwhelming our near ones with our affection. Burn what thou hast
worshipped, worship what thou has burnt. St Remys advice to Clovis is that of saintliness to every
convert. Leave your home and your kin, leave yourself and follow me, such is the call of charity. In
this it is not at all social. Indeed, it bursts out like fire thrown into the world and like a scandal for
the respectable people and the decent little families where everyone sleeps so cozily, safe from worries
and above all from worry about our neighbours misfortunes.
Love thy neighbour simply means: Love those you dont love. Nothing indeed is more simple
or more clear. It is at this price that your love will have no shadow-side of hate and no blemish of
indifference.
72.
Love and Justice

And now, how can love and justice be reconciled? In short, has one the right to love?
Let us not answer too hastily, and let us not think the question idle or answerable in a word.
The question is as old as man, and sooner or later, every loving and honourable man will come up
against it.
Justice is the mathematics of action, but whoever loves does not measure and does not calculate.
To love is to unite, but justice separates good and evil and consequently the good man from the bad
man. It combats and cuts.
Charity, says St. Paul, suffereth long, beareth all things, thinketh no evil. . . (I Cor. XIII). But
if justice endured all iniquities, forgave the wicked beforehand and closed her eyes to their misdeeds, it
would no longer be justice, but complaisance and complicity.
At every grave moment in our lives, we are faced with the question, Must I obey justice or charity?
For we must choose, and according to our choice, we shall punish or pardon, keep a sharp look out or
close our eyes, repel or embrace. . .
Yet charity, as love converted, has her own justice. If jutice says, Myself or someone else, its all
the same, charity, which consists in loving ones neighbour as oneself, speaks the same language on
this crucial point.
But on other points, charity and justice are far from coinciding. To the age-old question, the gospel
gives an answer. It might be said that in its most startling and disconcerting passages (the labourers
in the Vineyard, the Unjust Steward, the Sermon on the Mount and in the Passion itself) it asserts the
supremacy of charity over Justice or the Law.
But justice and the law can neither be abolished nor invalidated. They must be reconciled with
charity.
This is where we need a key. The key is Non-violence;
234
If you want the two major virtues, justice and charity, not to clash in good or to confound each
other in bloodshed, subtract from each what it has in common with its contrary.
And what do charity and justice have in common with their contraries, injustice and hatred?
Violence?
Take that away, and their reconciliation is achieved. Leave it, and everything will remain confused
and discordant in spite of good intentions and high virtue. You will have to choose between one or the
other, and in the difficulty of the choice, you will choose neither the one nor the other.
73.
The Rule of Non-violent Tactics
The tactical rule of non-violence is laid down in the Gospel with precision that leaves nothing to
be desired:
Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
What is the rule?
Lead your enemy to do you twice as much harm as he intended, with astounding and disappointing ease.
Why?
So that he will fall into space and find himself faced with the evidence.
Because, when a man has steeled himself to knock down an obstacle, and meeting none, has fallen
into space, he tries to right himself. Translated into inner language, his gesture is called self-recollection
and reflection.
However blind and brutal the passion of the agressor may be, he is a man, and the spirit of justice
is at work in him whether he likes it or not. If he injures you unjustly, he knows perfectly well what
he deserves, and he is expecting it. Now, not only does he not receive measure for measure, but he lets
himself be carried away into inflicting on you what he himself should undergo, doubling the measure.
It is not possible that at a given moment, something will not yield in his dark soul.
74.
Risks and Dangers
Yes, but supposing that the fool, instead of giving me a slap on my other cheek, needs to give me a
hundred slaps in order to understand that he cant go on doing it?
Or supposing he has to hit my head with a sledge-hammer for comprehension to dawn on him?
Or supposing that, instead of understanding at the end of a week what I am fasting for, it takes him
eight months to see the point?
What then?
Yes, indeed, it might very well happen to you. What is more, in the best of events, the very least
that can happen to you is to take great risks and to suffer greatly.
235
But if you are afraid to take risks, to suffer and to die, then you are not fit for non-violence, nor
even for violence.
Should this be your case, you had better put your slippers on and stay in your room until such time
as the flu or atomic disintegration or decrepitude get the better of your prudence.
75.
A Fine Piece of Impudence
If I understand rightly, then, non-violence is a way of forcing an adversary because force is

indeed used of forcing him to reflect, of pushing his nose into his own mess, of making his misdeed
stare him in the face until he cannot but admit the truth.
And you call yourself non-violent, do you?
Well then, all I can say is that you have colossal impudence!
For if I understand rightly, truth is in your possession! Its your property, your monopoly, your
personal business!
And other people, poor things, all sinning away in spiritual obscurity you wont leave them
alone until they have justified you!
Its a strong argument, but it should be reversed.
It should be returned, for it is exactly the attitude of the violent.
They are all right about everything, whereas their adversary is absolutely, ridiculously and insanely
wrong, wrong about everything.
All the people who quarrel explain this till they are red in the face and each of them explains and
not one of them listens.
Whether the quarrel is between scolds fighting with their brooms on their doorsteps or two nations
doing the same thing through diplomatic channels.
Gandhi requires of his followers to examine themselves before any action, and to grasp their own
share of blame in the conflict that has arisen.
Secondly, to accuse themselves before the enemy (a far cry from the manoeuvres of selfjustification).
Thirdly, to offer reparation and do penance publicly.
Lastly, to consider the blows, the insults and the loss they will have to undergo in the struggle as
not nearly so unjust as they seem. To bear them in expiation for the sins of the world in which they have
their part and for those of the enemy for which they voluntarily share responsibility.
Even if our share of blame in the business is like a straw, and the enemys like a mountain, we must
bring the straw to light and burn it before we have any right to deal with the mountain.
But thats madness you will say, to give somebody a stick to break your own back!
My enemy doesnt know what my share of blame is, and the proof is that he accuses me of everything except that!
(Yes, and that gives you the double advantage of being sure that your turpitude is safe from sight
and of being able to answer accusations with the noble indignation of innocence!)
True, your enemy knows nothing about it. He knows nothing about it, but he knows!
236
Or it is as if he did. For as long as you hide it, (that fault which he has neither discovered nor
guessed and of which the confession would astonish him) you will receive no other answer to your
accusations than And what about yourself?
Whereas your confession will make him examine his own conscience.
76.
Non-violence Mistaken
But what if a non-violent person is mistaken, supposing some unfortunate creature testifies with
heroic courage to an imaginary right or wrong idea?
There is no lack of fanatics ready to die for some dream.
If a person is to be fanatical, it is better that he should be so at his own cost, in non-violence, than
that he should inflict his fury on others. As for the kind of mistake that may find its way into a sincere
and sane mans mind, the experience of non-violence has shown that what happens every time is that
through fasting, suffering, long waiting, repeated failure, the truth his testimony was to make clear to
his adversary, the truth of which he himself was unaware, becomes clear to him.
In other words, one cannot use non-violence to get the better of the adversary, for non-violence
always vindicates what is right.
77.
Misuse of Non-violence
Is it possible knowingly to misuse non-violence?
The motive for misuse is generally profit or pleasure, but non-violence promises nothing of the
kind and in consequence hardly lends itself to such a thing.
However, there is something that may have a semblance of non-violence, and that is what is commonly known as sentimental blackmail. It is fairly often practised by parents and children as well
as by lovers. It works like a lever upon the frailties of attachment, not on the conscience or a sense of
fairness and it owes its force to some morbid weakness. It has no issue from the narrow prison in which
it is merely one low trick among so many others.
But if non-violence is the force of truth, as soon as truth is missing, its point is blunted and the
lever can no longer be inserted. To misuse it is therefore almost impossible, whereas the use and misuse
of Force are almost indistinguishable when its purpose is to inflict punishment.
78.
Detestable Modesty
All that is no doubt very fine, but we are not saints, people say with detestable modesty.
And what does this Gandhi in the debate as to whether he was a hero or a saint have to say
about himself?
He says, Im just an ordinary man. In which one can observe the humility of the saint and the
moderation of the wise man. Nevertheless, even out of humility, even out of moderation, Gandhi would
never have said a thing he did not believe to be true.
And in a sense, he is right. He was not extraordinarily intelligent or learned or cultured or eloquent
237
or gifted for the arts or inspired by heaven or, to be sure, of fascinating beauty.
But the very fact of being just an ordinary man is one of the most conclusive and stimulating
features of his example, for since he was capable of such great achievements although just like one of
us, then our mediocrity is not an excuse for our doing nothing.
It is not a question of being saints. It is a question of being men. Of living. Of surviving. Of
not being swallowed up body and soul. Non-violence invites us to effort and sacrifice, but violence and
cowardice push us into the pit.
79.
The Capacity of Europeans
Are Europeans capable of non-violence, at least in numbers? Is it not foreign to them? Are they
not averse to it by their nature and tradition?
Some nations are more gifted and prepared for non-violence than others. After the Hindus, the
African peoples are perhaps called to take a place in the first rank because of that very simplicity of
which other races took advantage to reduce them to slavery and to averwhelm them with their contempt.
They are perhaps those last who shall be first, the stone, forgotten on the worksite, that will become
the cornerstone. In Ghana and in the U.S.A. they have begun to show that they have taken Gandhis
lesson to heart.
In Central Africa, there is an ancient prophecy which runs more or less like this (I am quoting from
memory):
We were there at the beginning: it is we who opened the gates.
Then lighter-skinned men came and dominated us and set us to work, but they did not despise us.
Then they perished.
Then lighter-skinned men came who enslaved and despised us. They will perish.
We, the last, shall close the gates.
To reply: Are Europeans so very much inferior to Hindus and Negroes? so stupid that they cannot
admit the obvious cannot set themselves a reasonable and courageous purpose and advance?
No nation as a whole is inclined towards non-violence. If it has a choice between good and bad
weapons, without hesitation it will choose the bad ones.
That the Indians followed Gandhi in such great numbers is due to their having scarcely any choice.
Unarmed and defenceless, they were faced with an Empire superlatively armed and organized.
But lo! by a twist of the dialectics of history, the West now finds itself in the same situation as the
Indians did, except that it is not yet aware of the fact, for an absurd excess of arms which one dare not
touch is a form of helplessness equal to the lack of arms.
And the fomentors of Progress and the Modernization of Defence are still thinking in terms of
Napoleonic or Victorian conquest.
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80.
The Capacity of the Military
This very day, in England a Commander proud of his decorations, has envisaged and published a
plan for the non-violent defence of his country21 .
Up till now, non-violence was the business of prophets and was not faring too well. But now that
the military have taken it up, it should really get under way!
Joking apart, it is not the first time that warriors have entered the ranks, and in the light of what
we have said about the Hero, this is not surprising. Whoever is of noble blood and heart must recognize
that there is no place for the heroic virtues in the horror of mechanized mass massacre, and as a true
warrior, he can only abhor modern warfare. Meanwhile, in the noble discipline of non-violence, he will
find a challenge to his courage and satisfaction of his thirst for honour.
Examples of converted warriors abound from Emperor Ashok to St. Martin of Tours, who rejected
the weapons of death for those of life. And in our own day, what more admirable example could there be
that that of General Rondon, the national hero of Brazil, the pacifier of the wild Indians of the outlying
districts. Rather be killed than kill was his motto.
Gandhi had no more fervent disciple than the great war-chief from the mountain tribes of the
north-west, and what is more, a Moslem: Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The Sikhs, warriors from father to
son since their origin, answered Gandhis call to revolution, not in a body, but in ranks, and made an
unforgettable appearance in full dress, turbans high, arms by their side, chest decorated and exposed
in those ranged battles of non-violence that marked history in Bombay. Moreover, Vinoba is trying to
set up a truly non-violen army in India, a standing army of seventy thousand men.
Non-violence has a long history in the West. It has had its apostles, its heroes, its theoricians, its
poets, its revolutionaries. It has carried off victories, no doubt less famous than those of Gandhi in
India, yet great and significant, matter for thought and for hope.
81.
The Charter of Non-violence

The Gospel is the charter of western non-violence:
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. . .
Love thy enemies, bless them which hate thee. . .
Whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. . .
And if any man. . . take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. . .
Peter, sheath thy sword! All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. . .
These are the articles of the Charter, such as they were given, without explanation for they have no
need of any for those who have ears to hear. There is no other commentary than the acts of His life, and
the supreme act of His Passion.
The Christian who refuses or neglects or forgets the teaching of Non-violence contained in these
articles takes away the flame from the fire that Jesus came to send on earth. He blunts the point of
His sword and takes from the salt its savour.
21
National Defence in the Nuclear Age. King Hall.
239
82.
Non-violence, the Weapon of the Martyrs
Since our childhood, the acts of the first Christians have been an object of veneration rather than of
critical reflection.
Nevertheless, if we consider their constant attitude as a method, its similarity becomes clear with
what Thoreau and Gandhi call Civil Disobedience, their culminating and decisive gesture being the
refusal to sacrifice to idols 22 . This corroborated other refusals: refusal to resort to the law for selfdefence, refusal to defend themselves in courts, refusal to own private property, to accede to power or
to bear arms. . .
This resistance brought on them the execration of the civilized world, including such great thinkers
as Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus. In the eyes of worldly wisdom, it must be said that their refusal
to burn incense to idols seems quite senseless. If the idol is just a piece of wood and the incense merely
a puff of smoke, the easy sacrifice made under duress is void and null but likely to calm a stupid and
hostile crowd. How much more pointless and even crazy it seemed to refuse the gesture and thus expose
the Community to losing its finest members, one after the other. Already too few, these guardians of an
infinitely precious heritage would be decimated. But here, as elsewhere, worldly wisdom is negative,
presumptuous and blind, incapable of grasping reality in its depth, incapable therefore of foreseeing
even the immediate future. Non-violence alone has proved itself far-seeing and efficient. Adopted by a
united group conscious of its doctrinal principles, its mystical implications, the personal discipline and
the practical and social consequences it entails, non-violence vanquished and shook the ancient world
to its foundations, then, in their turn, all the barbarian nations. As they advanced, it conquered the
conquerors.
83.
Attila faced with the Lions and Wolves of Non-violence
Flood upon flood of barbarian invasion had broken the dykes of the Roman Empire when the great
tidal wave arose that swept everything before it - Attila with his overpowering hordes of horsemen. It
was said that where he had passed, the grass grew no more.
Now, on two occasions the Scourge of God clashed with non-violence, and the second time was
broken.
The first time was at Troyes, having stormed the city walls, he entered the cathedral where the
population had taken refuge to be with their Bishop, St. Loup. As he came in, he could see only their
backs, for all had fixed their gaze on the host which the priest was raising. In the powerful silence, the
conqueror stood still, dumbfounded. He withdrew, rallied his men and left the city without looting it.
The year after, he invaded Italy and swooped on Rome where as a youth he had been held hostage.
The revenge he meant to inflict on it was to be equel to the wound inflicted on his pride. A river barred
the way but he soon found a ford and was urging his horse across it when, on the opposite bank, he
caught sight of a body of men marching toward him, armed, not with spears, but with a crucifix only.
They were headed by Pope Leo the First seated on a mule and wearing the tiara. As they advanced, they
were singing.
The barbarian lost countenance, wheeled about and never came back.
22
Their refusal was sometimes accompanied by the breaking of statues. Note here, as in India, the aggressive, provocative,
vehement aspect of non-violence. Which, need it be said, has nothing to do with non-resistance, the force of inertia, or
resignation to fate, or acquiescence in lying, injustice and outrage, the excesses of others. On the contrary, it is by definition a
resistance to evil by the force of the spirit (Satyagraha).
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84.
Non-violence, Foundation of the Church
When the Church became a sovereign body, when everyone could enter it without difficulty and
without running any risk, then the spirit of the world entered it too, and the Prince of this world had
his revenge. The Christian Church treated with the powers of the more or less Christianized world, and
herself became a worldly power more or less like the others. Non-violence and evangelical poverty
(there can never be the one without the other), the spirit of prophecy, the gift of healing, miracles and
divine grace became proportionately rarer. There were Papal armies, Papal prisons, crusades, burning
at the stake, religious warfare, the justification of national or colonial wars and all manner of oppression
and repression. These facts cannot be denied, and it is not our intention to defend them - or to attack
them. Notwithstanding, we maintain that they are an accidental and temporal aspect of things. The
authentic, permanent doctrine of the Church remains profoundly respecful of nature and humanity, and
moderate.
Such also is its essential structure. No dignity can be won in it by force of arms. Its authority is
exercised without coercion.
Its highest title is the childish and familiar one of Papa, wherein it differs from all empires and all
republics. The immense riches it handles come solely from contributions similar to the taxes every state
levies on its subjects, but here again the difference is striking, for in all regimes, taxes can be exacted
only because of fear of the penalties the slightest delay in payment incurs, whereas the Church, in all
her splendour, remains a beggar at the corner of the street.
85.
Among the Saints and in Sects
The scarcity of evangelical virtues in the main body of Christendom has from time to time startled
men into awakening and conversion. In every century, two kinds of men have arisen whose history is
that of non-violence in the West: saints who bring about reforms, and founders of sects.
They oppose and resemble each other. The former rectify the Church from within, renew it with
their flame, found an order, a work, a spiritual school. The latter rebel or are expelled and seek to found
a new church, like that of the early days. But more often than not, the saint, obedient to God rather than
to men, is taken for a heretic or a rebel, suffers persecution and condemnation, and is canonized only
after being put to death. On the other hand, the heresiarch sometimes manifests the virtues, the fervour,
the purity and charity and the charisma which characterize the saint.
The most famous sect of the Middle Ages was that of the Albigensians, who called themselves
the Catharists or the Pure, and who did indeed practice purity and non-violence. They were utterly
destroyed by a war which cut off the lovable civilization of Provence in its flower. This tragedy might
seem to be a total failure for non-violence. But two facts prove that this is not so.
The first is that it was not a matter of non-violent resistance wiped out by brutal force, but of a war
in which violence was unleashed on both sides.
The seconds that under the same heading of Albigensians, we put two kinds of men who, to their
misfortune, were only too separate: on the one hand, the tiny number of the pure or perfect, on
the other, the great flock of people the former had cut off from the Church without admitting them to
their communion, considering them unworthy, and whom their over-pure doctrine, with its rejection of
everything pertaining to nature and the flesh, had deprived of all help, happiness and hope.
It was not the Non-violence of the Catharists, but the violence and impurity of their defenders that
caused their common downfall.
241
***
Then came the Renaissance of the pagan gods, and the Reform and the wars of religion. Men
fought one another to see who was the better Christian, and it seemed obvious that the better was the
one who killed the other. But sects arose to reform the Reform, and saints arose to prevent the gates of
Hell from prevailing.
There were Mennonites and Mormons, the Amish of Holland and the Dukhobors of Russia, the
Hutterites of Switzerland and Germany, all of whom fled from persecution to American soil where they
formed peaceful and fraternal closed communities. Today, in France, we have Jehovahs witnesses,
Adventists and the Friends of Man.
***
We cannot fail to render special hommage to George Fox (1624-1691) and his descendants, mockingly called Quakers, or Tremblers because of the solemn vibration of their voices when preaching.
Without using the word non- violence (unknown at the time) for several centuries, and in thousands,
they taught and practised that virtue with a courage bordering on martyrdom.
In an age when Cromwell the Puritan had unleashed civil war and brought the King of England
to the block, when the Thirty Years War in all its atrocity was ravaging the continent, when the wheel,
strappado, the stake and other torture took place in public for the entertainment of the crowd, when
honour required every lord to settle his quarrels of love or pride weapon in hand, this out and out
conscientious objector, this evangelical disputer refused to do military service, to swear in court, to bow
to the powerful or to address them by their titles or to use the customary obsequious forms of address,
and rejected every legal form of lucre and violence.
He would go into churches, or bell-houses as he called them, and loudly ask the preacher, in the
midst of his sermon, who was paying him. The latter sometimes fainted, sometimes became converted
with all his flock, sometimes, roaring with anger, handed him over to the guards to be flogged on the
spot and thrown into jail. He spoke to Kings and to the Pope as if they were ordinary men, addressed
himself to the Lord Protector of the Kingdom with his big black hat pulled down over his ears and his
leather jacket which like himself had suffered, from downpours of rain in the open countryside and
mouldered in prison cells on a bed of human dung.
With the invulnerable vigour which the Holy Ghost lends to those it burns inwardly, in towns and
in villages, in mountains and on heaths, his rugged, torrential eloquence stirred the multitude, set on
fire pell mell farmers, ministers of the church, doctors, prelates, magistrates and sons of lords such as
William Penn who founded, in the New World, in the land of forests23 , the first non-violent kingdom
of Christianity, showing that one can treat savages otherwise than with massacre or by perverting them
under colour of civilizing them.
Everywhere, opportunely or inopportunely, the Tremblers, men and women, standing on a chair or
on a barrel, preached and thundered, ceaselessly incommoding accomodating Christians, those armed,
cuirassed, bewigged and well-provided servants of the Prince of this World. These listened, looking
at the ground or grinding their teeth, and many a time the preahcing was put a stop to by piercing the
tongue of the speaker with a red-hot iron or putting a rope round his neck.
These fervent witnesses to the love of Christ had to undergo the same persecution, in Christian
lands, in Great Britain and in America, as Tiberius and Nero inflicted on the first Christians, and for the
23
Pennsylvania
242
same reason: one cannot at the same time be the friend of God and the friend of this world (John II;
James IV, 4).
Then as fervour on the one side and fury on the other died out with time, respectable people finally
admitted the Quakers to their society. Indeed, they now have a very good place in it.
There is no doubt that after King Charles the Seconds Declaration of Indulgence, the non-violence
of the Society of Friends (as they called their church) lost its agressive force. They have bartered
their evangelical title of the Blessed Poor for that of the Kind Rich sympathetic toward other peoples
misfortunes.
Yet they have never disarmed in their war upon war, upon intolerance, tyranny and injustice.
Since 1650 until our day, they have not ceased attacking the monstrous and vain cruelty men cover
with the name of Justice.
They were the first to struggle for the abolition of slavery.
They were the first to work out a plan for a World Parliament which would settle conflict between
nations peacefully.
Today, there are 170,000 of them scattered all over the world. They have founded hospitals, nurseries, homes and missions for first aid.
During the two world conflagrations, they helped victims on both sides without entering the hostilities.
But the Friends not only know how to act, speak, struggle, and give, they also, and above all, know
how to be silent. They know how to listen to the answers, the inspirations and the decisions of silence.
In this too, they are ourvenerable forerunners. Even although in the Ark silent worship does not replace
the ordinary forms of religion, but completes them.
Gandhi professed deep admiration for them.
***
The Jesuits of Paraguay made an experiment in non-violence even more complete, lasting and
admirable. In their reductions they protected the natives from slavery and corruption, and by sharing
work and responsibility equally, by the distribution of all goods gratis and by free election of their
leaders, gave farmers and craftsmen an independent regime such as Gandhi and Vinoba dreamed of
setting up in India under the name of Gramraj24 .
86.
The Revolutionary Non-violence of the Nineteenth Century
The nineteenth century saw the beginning of the holy wars of social revolution. It was no longer the
charity of Christ or the glory of God, but the happiness of humanity which became the legitimate pretext
for collective and systematic manslaughter. A few solitary men were of the opinion that to achieve such
a desirable purpose, there must be better means than intrigue, plotting, the overthrow of rulers, murder
and terror; that in order to achieve justice and peace, just and peaceful means should be found; that
these means remained the best, even if they were slow and more difficult, but that being more logical,
they might also be simpler and more expedient. The doctrine of civic non-violence was born. It had its
The name of
great apostles at the two extremities of the West: in America, Thoreau, in Russia, TolstoN.
24
Clovis Lugon, La Rpublique des Guaranis (Editions Ouvrires, rue de Seine, Paris).
243
John Ruskin of England may be added. (Gandhi drew from these three sources. Apart from the Gospel
and the Gita, he found in them almost all the elements of his thought.)
Thoreau had meditated on the immortal pages of Etienne de la Boetie: Of Voluntary Bondage (Discours sur la Servitude volontaire) written in the middle of the sixteenth century, and he discovered the
point at which the presure of direct non-violent action must be brought to bear. La Boetie is astonished
at the eagerness and zeal with which, unlike unreasoning animals, man subjugates himself. Indeed,
those who wield the power that oppresses him have only the power he grants them. Tyrants, of themselves, can do nothing: their subjects make them powerful by believing them to be so. As for soldiers,
they are the people grinding down the people on behalf of the established powers.
From which Thoreau draws the conclusion that the citizen who obeys laws and orders without
asking any questions does only half his duty and often does the contrary of his duty. For whenever the
law functions against justicle, whenever it pleases a leader to turn into a despot, the citizen serves as an
instrument and an accomplice. For is own good and for the good of all, he must therefore learn Civil
Disobedience.
When men unite in sufficient number and apply this principle boldly and strictly, they develop
considerable power. Any enslaved nation can be freed from its occupiers without striking a blow,
armies can be undone without a battle an oppressed class can be righted without setting up barricades, a
regime everthrown without hanging anyone from lamp-posts, financial corruption can be prevented and
wars stopped, as Gandhi and others were to prove.
87.
The Emperor of Hungary in Check,

A Funereal Rebellion and the Christ of the Andes
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Hungarians, who were under the yoke of Austria,
quietly and methodically turned their backs on the Viennese government and saw to their own public
education, legal procedure and industrial and agricultural production, and refused to buy Austrian goods
and to pay taxes. The seizures and forced sales which ensued cost the government more than they
brought in. The police, the law courts and the prisons were overwhelmed by the numbers of honourable
delinquents. Forces of order were sent and billeted throughout the country. The officers were lodged
and fed, but not a soul spoke to them. Thereupon, the Emperor of Austria saw fit to impose compulsory
military service on the Hungarians, but once more met with total refusal. In 1857, after five years of
struggle, but without a drop of bloodshed, the Hungarians got their own way.
***
At about the same time, Poland was groaning under the boot of Russia. In vain did she entreat the
Czar to give her a parliament. The uprising which then took place might then took place might well
be called the Funeral Rebellion. When the funeral procession of a patriot poet appeared to be endless,
the police became uneasy. They ordered the mourners to disperse but the procession went on. Then the
police launched a cavalry attack, but the procession, leaving its dead and wounded on the pavement,
formed anew and continued until nightfall. All the dead who had fallen that day were given similar
funerals. The whole nation went into mourning for a year. As a result, Poland obtained a parliament
from the Czar.
Counter-proof: three years later, Poland had recourse to armed revolt. The Russians, who asked
for nothing better, crushed it.
244
***
When relations between Argentina and Chile deteriorated, the two armies marched toward each
other through the high passes in the Andes. But on each side, a bishop went ahead of the troops. The
bishops met and exchanged the kiss of peace in the sight of the soldiers. And instead of fighting, they
sealed a pact of alliance and perpetual friendship between the two nations. A statue of Christ, His hand
raised in blessing, stands on the mountain to commemorate this victimless victory.
88.
The Present and the Future of Non-violence
The world wars of the twentieth century have had an answer and a compensation. That answer, that
compensation are the Gandhian Epic.
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear!
Let him who is not deafened by noise and fear, let him who is not blinded by lucre or hatred, grasp
the meaning of this parallel!
And let no-one say that Providence does not keep watch, or that the world is absurd!
***
Here are some of the feats of non-violence in the West during this century.
The liberation of Ireland was almost parallel to that of India. On the whole, it was bloody in the
extreme. Nevertheless, it was ennobled by some non-violent deeds, of which the most famous was the
sacrifice of the young mayor of Cork who, to advance his cause, fasted to death in his prison.
In 1909, the women of Spain opposed the unpopular Moroccan war by lying across the rails in
front of trains that were to transport troops. In 1914, a million workmen prevented the government in
Madrid from entering the war on the side of the Allies. In 1958, the students in Salamanca, and the city
of Barcelona set up silent resistance to the dictatorship.
In 1950, Vienna, devastated and ruined by war, was divided into four zones of which the largest
was allotted to the Russians.
The Soviets were persuaded that the small, enslaved and demoralized state was going to fall into
their hands like a ripe fruit. They had the order given for a general strike which was to furnish them
with a pretext for accupying the country completely.
On their way to work, the crowd found Floritzdorfer bridge cut off by barricades, behind which
armoured tanks were massed. For some time, the human wall and the steel wall stood face to face.
Then, in silence, the human wall advanced. The barricades were swept away and the armoured tanks
retreated.
In Africa, Nkrumah, inspired by Gandhi, freed his country, Ghana, from the English.
The lonely, obscure and silent sacrifice of conscientious objectors in every country in Europe and
America cannot solve the problem of war, of which the army is merely an instrument, not the cause.
Refusal to fight does not touch the perennial root of war. But at least objectors will gain recognition
for one of mans fundamental rights, a right which democracy crushes underfoot as not even barbarian
empires did: the right not to kill.
245
The Swiss Pierre Crsole was one of the first objectors. He refused not only armed service, but also
war taxes, and gave up an inheritance to wander all over the world, helping whoever gave him shelter.
At the end of the First World War, he turned conscientious objection from a negative into a positive
thing by setting up International Voluntary Civil Service in opposition to compulsory military service.
This organization comes to the aid of populations in distress from whatever cause, but especially when
they are stricken by war. This peace army is small indeed in face of the mighty struggle which, till it
came into existence, had not even begun, for lack of fighters25
Smaller still is the Working Order of the Ark. However, it is unique in one respect: it is at the
same time a working order and a school of inner life, where non-violence is practised in all spheres - in
religion, education, medicine, social relations, the law, economy, food, dress and aesthetics.
The struggle of the Black People of Alabama in the United States against segragation recently
ended in total victory. Led by a pastor, Martin Luther King, it gave rise to collective religious ecstasy.
In the United States, a group of Catholics headed by Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy publish a
newspaper called The Catholic Worker. They attract attention by their daring, their charity and common
sense (which gives them a reputation for craziness). Every year, they commemorate and do penance
for Hiroshima by a public fast. They refuse to do military service and to pay war taxes, they invade
bombtesting areas, suffer imprisonment by the police and the burning down of their homes by neighbours. They live in voluntary poverty, found homes for tramps, create communities in the country and
are guilty of other similar eccentricities.
***
Then came the bandit from Sicily, of all bandits the most awkward, the enemy of the blissful
tranquility of decent people, the bandit Danilo Dolci. Thoroughly kind, perfectly simple, young yet
wise, patient, built like an ox, it is not too much to say that he is of the stuff that Gandhi was made of. In
his dedication to the rescue of the poor he is ever-present and ever-ready to help. In this, in his fasting
and in his world-wide appeal for aid his work is akin to that of Abb Pierre and Dr. Schweitzer, who
also have their part in the history of revolutionary non-violence because of the questions they raise in
every conscience and that spark of loving anger in them which can never be lacking from the force of
truth.
The scandal of torture in the Algerian War, (war all the more atrocious as it is called pacification violence and lying go together) gave rise to various protests from widely differing quarters: catholics,
protestants, political campaigners, were astonished to find themselves side by side. Generals and professors resigned their posts; academicians and philosophers went down into the street, others fasted. All
this took place spontaneously and simultaneously but without coordination.
The Companions of the Ark, leaving their friends and their spring tasks on the farm, invaded the
nearby atomic plant at Marcoule, breaking through the barriers set up by the police, to protest against
the manufacture of the plutonium bomb, and refused to leave the premises. They were dragged out by
the shoulders and the feet. Shortly afterwards they undertook to fast for a fortnight in front of the same
factory while another team did the same in front of the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva.
In England, on two occasions, a procession three miles long walked at Easter from London to
Aldermaston. Other English people made a non-violent attack on the launching ramps at Swaffham and
25
But let us not forget Pastors Andr Trocm and Henri Roser, as well as Camille Drevet, who have given their whole lives
to the cause of conscientious objection. Also, the writings, the fasts and the protests of Louis Massignon for the sake of a
peace with Islam concluded in comprehension and justice. (Note to the first edition).
Since then, Non-violent Civic Action, an offshoot of the Ark, has come into being. Thanks to its activities and to Louis
Lecoins long fast, a legal statute for conscientious obejctors has been obtained in France. (Note to the second edition).
246
were brutally illtreated. Forty of them were jailed.
Among non-violent war resisters, let us not forget the eighteen German scientists who refused to
collaborate in the manufacture of the Bomb and nobly resigned.
As a matter of fact, there are more conscientious objectiors today in Germany and Japan than
anywhere else.
Of admirable courage was the attempt of two ships captains to sail with their families into the
forbidden dangerous zone of the Pacific. The people on board the Golden Rule and the Phoenix were
ready to die of atomic leprosy in order to attract the worlds attention to the horror of Disintegration.
What is the future of non-violence in the West? The question might just as easily be put in these
terms: Has the West a future?
The good news, the only thing eternally new, is that another road is open.
89.
The First Steps
Let us see what the practical solutions are, for time is short. How can we prevent the two Blocs
from producing new bombs and hurling them at each other over our heads or perhaps through us?
Time is short indeed. So, as a wise man used to say, Let us be wise enough not to hurry.
Your broadmindedness and your self-effacement do you honour. Your first thought is to put world
affairs in order and you have completely forgotten yourself!
Because time is short, beware of taking the three hundred and thirty third step before taking the
first. It would be a waste of time.
I ask you, no matter how big-hearted you are, can you give what you havent got? Before setting
the world at peace, you must make peace in your own home, and there can be no peace in your home if
there is none in your heart.
Justice and peace cannot be brought into the world without violence or coercion if, on your own or
other peoples acts, you impose hard and fast laws and other rules of the game. Justice is non-violent
and free when action springs from within and when its order reflects order reigning within.
People speak of non-violence as if it were a technique or tactics, but it is nothing of the kind, unless
figuratively. It is neither a procedure nor a recipe nor a system.
It is a way of doing that springs from a way of being26 .
Justice, as we have seen, is founded on Unity and Equality. To be precise: on outward Equality and
on inner Unity.
But have you got inner Unity?
Do you even know what it is?
Above all, do you know that you havent got it?
If my reader feels annoyed that I presume to judge him so rashly without knowing him, then my
words have hit the mark, and the question applies to him, he should take them to heart not as an insult,
but as an admonition. The man who possesses inner unity and knows what it is will be unaffected by
them, for the knows how rare that unity is and how difficult to achieve.
26
Aldo Capitini, La Rivoluzione Aperta.
247
He will also know that inner unity cannot be stung by wounded pride. Your first step then is to
train for non-violence. Everybody knows that war requires years of preparation, preparation which
needs preparation, from childhood onward, at home and at school. Surely peace cannot be won at less
expense.
The task is two-fold: not only must we learn the new way, we must also unlearn the old one that
has been dinned into us all our lives long and demonstrated by everything in our environment.
Preparation for non-violence requires no costly apparatus or training ground. However, one must
train with perseverance, sparing no effort, and train in three ways: in secret, in private and in public.
90.
Secret Preparation
By definition, it is not publishable27 . Not that it has anything to do with plotting or Black Mass or
magic ritual or secret societies with passwords to safeguard their occult privileges.
On the contrary, nothing could by nature be simpler or more clear. It is a matter of learning to know
and to possess oneself in order to give oneself, of developing mental concentration, of acquiring control
over the emotions and the senses, of bodily training and a corresponding rule of life.
By right it is universal and open to all, but cannot be communicated in writing (just as music and
fencing cannot be learned from books). It can only be transmitted orally and it requires demonstration,
surveyance and precaution.
No more than this can be said, but secret preparation must be insisted on because of the great
number of people who ignore it, or forget it, which is the reason for their lack of success. In spite of
their dedication and their good intent, they have overlooked the essential point.
91.
Private Preparation
Non-violence is the finest quality of the soul, but it develops through practice. (Gandhi)
If non-violence is the art of peacemaking, there is no lack of opportunity for practice and you can
start this very evening - or rather tomorrow morning, for sleep brings counsel.
Certainly, we are never short of conflict. Almost everybody is on the brink of, or in the heat of
some difference, with his or her family or children, or husband or wife, or employees or employer, or
hall porter, or neighbour if not with someone or other who has just trodden on his foot or snatched his
wallet.
Begin with the simple conflicts which seem easy to solve (it will not be as easy as you think), but
on the other hand, you will discover that conflicts to which there was apparently no solution can be
solved by non-violence, and by non-violence only.
Practice first on people you love and respect, and who love and respect you. Before coming to love
your enemies, begin by fighting your friends well.
Do not quarrel or argue, or preach, but fast until your friend understands what, for his own good
and for the good of all he must understand: that such and such an action or gesture is unworthy of him,
that he cannot be allowed to commit this or that act of negligence or iniquity.
27
But some idea of it maybe gained from Introduction to Inner Life.
248
Be patient and calm if you can, but above all, fearless and firm. Dont beat about the bush or
dissemble. And go to somebody who can give you advice and encouragement.
92.
Public Commitment
Secret and private preparation will train you for public action, but public action is itself preparation
for further public action. You must not commit yourself without preparation, neither should you wait to
be perfect before beginning. You would go on waiting forever, and events do not wait to hit us. Besides,
each form of preparation is the field of distinct and specific experiences, so it is best to go ahead with
all three at the same time and not one after the other. It is enough to make your plans according to such
strength and clearsightedness as you possess.
A beginner should not plunge into public action singlehanded unless he has a special vocation. He
should arrange to enter some well-led group. Teachers of non-violence should be distinguished from
soldiers and servants of non-violence. The former are able to draw on their own ressources for a plan
of action and the leadership and instruction of their men. Gandhi found his collaborators in the street,
by the thousands, and they trained by following him.
Various movements have arisen in France and have tried themselves out in silent demonstration.
The Ark has launched a movement of Non-violent Civic Action and opened periodical camps for instruction and training, there are also Groups of Friends of the Ark in all the main cities.
93.
The two Hearts of Europe
The fire of Gandhian non-violence has been lit in two hearths in Europe within the last decade: that
of Danielo Dolci in Sicily and of Ark in France.28
The gentle bandit is our friend. We fasted with him in Partinico and two of his sons trained for one
sommer in the Ark. Our views differ on almost every subject, just as much we differ in appearance and
manner. But our agreement is profound. On many problems which to us seem vital and crucial, he has
no view at all. He is striving to solve a local problem which he knowns thoroughly and in which he
is engaged completely. He will not give up, so long as he lives, until he has put things right. In him,
and around him, there is a great lack of spriritual and religious inspiration. (I am expressing regret, not
blame). He has invented the counter-strike ans has succeeded I think for the first time in Europe
in getting whole villages to fast.29 All who go to him in order to give or to serve have much to gain and
to learn.
94.
The Ark or the Gandhians of the West
The Ark might be reproached with doing just the opposite, of being more deeply engaged in spiritual preparation and in all-round education for nonviolence than in any particular public action.
Its intervention in public affairs has never been more than testimony symbolic rather than successful.
28
Today at: La Borie Noble, 34250 Le Bousquet dOrb (1959).

I will not dwell on the subject however much it, deserves to be developed, since three of four books have been published
on the subject by Descle and Le Seuil.
29
249
To do one must first be, and this is what we are attempting. Spiritual preparation is not a means for
us, but an end in itself more important than any outward manifestation or victory. Bringing man face
to face with God and with himself is in itself desirable. If the Tree of Life is found again, acts will fall
from it like ripe, good fruit.
The most efficient action, the most significant testimony to nonviolence and truth is not so much
handing out tracts in the street and talking to crowds, or going from door to door, leading walks and
campaigns, invading bomb factories, fasting in public, braving the police, undergoing assault and imprisonment (all of which we find right to do on occasion and do willingly), as living.
Living a life that is whole, and in which everything has the same sense, from the prayer and meditation to ploughing for our daily bread, from teaching the doctrine to handling manure, from cooking
to singing and dancing round the fire.
Showing that a life free from violence and abuse (from hidden violence as well as from brutal
violence, from legal and authorized abuse as well as from illegal abuse) is possible; that, even, such a
life is not more difficult than a life of gain, nor more unpleasant than a life of pleasure, nor less natural
than ordinary life.
Finding the nonviolent response to the problems that have always beset man, such as:
Can there be an economy that lends itself neither to oppression nor abuse?
Can children be educated in nonviolence ? Can nonviolence be taught to people of all ages?
Can authority be nonviolent, neither dependent on force nor carrying privilege?
Can justice be nonviolent?
Can there be justice without punishment, or punishment without violence?
Can agriculture and animal-breeding be nonviolent?
Can there be nonviolent medecine? A nonvioloent diet?
And to begin with, have we eliminated from our religious life all violence, even in word and
thought, even hidden ou disguised?
95.
Elements of a Nonviolent Economy
In the light of our intention to rid our lives of the Spirit of Profit and Play, major cause of injustice
and violence, it will come as no surprise:
That we endeavour to draw our living directly from the earth by the work of our hands, avoiding,
as far as we can, the use of machines and money;
That we endeavour not to break the link God and nature have put between what the mouth asks for
and what the two hands can produce;
That we reduce our desires to our needs, and our needs to the extreme so as to free ourselves from
excessive toil;
That we sell the surplus of what we produce for ourselves, but never buy in order to sell or profit
from mere exchange;
That we pool what resources we have that can serve the community and give up the rest, but our
communities remain poor and do not accumulate more than is needed for the years supplies;
250
That, as far as we can, we observe the golden rule never to pay anybody and never to let anyone
pay us;
That we exploit no man, even if he asks us to, and refuse to become the accomplices of any profiteer,
even if it might be convenient. For in the same measure as we are dedicated to service, we refuse
servitude;
That we try to exploit nothing at all, neither animals nor plants nor the earth. We work the land,
we let live, we accept natural losses, we help to live because one always ends up treating men in the
same manner as one treats nature;
That in the practice of any craft, we are less concerned with the quantity of the product than with
its quality, and less concerned with the product than with the craftsman;
That we do not consider work and craftsmanship as something external to personal and spiritual
life, but consider the work of the hands as a sacred act. It is also an act of life. So we want it to be
interesting, varied, harmonious, strengthening, instructive and edifying;
That the lowest and most menial tasks are shared by all, and foremost by our leaders, so that no-one
is demeaned or burdened by them;
That every craftsman among us knows and carries out his craft from beginning to end and makes
the whole object, from the raw material to the final decoration. Nobody is harnessed to a fragmentary
task or makes less than the whole object for fear of his becoming less than a man. For it is by making
things that a man makes himself. Nobody among us will be limited to a single craft, but will possess
several, and alternate them. Everybody has to help with the farming and the gardening according to the
season. This is the best kind of work for health and holiness. Let every craftsman seek the rhythm and
the sense of his craft and he will discover secrets lost since the ruin of the guilds.
The Ark is neither a Religious Order nor a Chivalrous Order. It draws, however, from both: it is
a Working Order. It is not a brotherhood of monks, but a new people, made up of laymen who have
children and bring them up. A people apart, but indifferent to barriers of nationality, class, race or creed.
A people that does not without good reason oppose established national law and authority but considers
itself, small though it be in numbers and strength, as free and sovereign like the nomads of the desert
and itinerant Gypsies.
96.
Elements of a Nonviolent Authority
Seeing that we mean to rid ourselves of the thirst of power, cause of all war, you will not be
surprised to learn that we are organized into Patriarcal Tribes; that our kinship is not founded upon blood
ties, but upon free choice and vows, and further, that authority for us is not hereditary but founded, too,
upon free choice, each leader appointing a successor, initiating him and preparing him for his eventual
leadership.
The Council of the Companions, men and women united around the Patriarch, unanimously takes
decisions in matters which concern the community, including the acceptance of a new Companion. If
unanimity is not reached, we fast and keep silence until it is achieved.
The Patriarch is fed, lodged and clothed like the others. No form of personal service is given to
him. He spends his days in the fields and in the workshops. He has charge of souls. He is the guardian
of the Rule and the Traditions. He may not order anything to be done which does not spring from the
doctrine and the Rule, or which is not dictated by the necessity of the moment. He blesses the bread and
leads the common prayer. He grants dispensation or tightens the discipline. He looks after the manure.
251
However, in all direct, civic, revolutionary action the Patriarch of the Order commands as a captain.
At the same time, each Companion is tried for a while in all of the positions of authority and in
every area of the community, then returns to his normal position. Aristotle says in his Politics that one
principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in turn. But for us, the two forms of service are
practised simultaneously through the Rule of co-responsibility.
97.
Elements of a Nonviolent Justice
No free man has the right to punish another. The free man is one who knows the law, recognizes
his fault and punishes himself.
Whoever is a witness to his brothers fault must not denounce him but rather seek him out in private
and ask him what penance he intends to do. If the one at fault refuses to recognize his error, the witness
must do penance for him. Thus the policeman, the spy, the judge and the executioner disappear from
the scene. All the justice of the Order is founded upon the practice; it is the Gem of the Rule.
At regular intervals, the Companion assemble for the culpa. Each denounces his shortcomings
with regard to the Rule and offers reparation.
One way comment on the general discipline of the day but without accusing anyone in particular.
Evening prayers and with the kiss of peace, hence all dispute is impossible or at least cannot last
because this would render the closing of the day impossible. All of the community would keep vigil,
pray, fast and wait until reconciliation came.
98.
Relations of the Order with the World
The Companions are not out of the world. They are in the world but not of the world. They are
within though against it; against, hence within. They are sent on mission from time to time. Hospitality, abundant correspondence, counsel, assistance, the obligations of good neighbourliness and public
demonstrations are all links with the world.
Furthermore, certain members, alone or in small groups, serve the Community while living outside
it: these are the Faithful. Finally, in the cities, there are groups of Friends of the Ark who benefit
from the spiritual teaching, take part if they wish in civic action, participate in training sessions at the
Community and assemble there for celebration of the major Feast Days. Some of these Friends bind
themselves to the Order by a promise and are known as Allies.
99.
The four Feast Days
In a Working Order, the Feast is even more important than work, because the Feast Day is the Work
of God.
It is the opposite of distraction, of diversion, of a game. It is the celebration of recall, or return into
oneself, of return to the Lord, the joy of uniting with one another and of binding oneself to the others, a
time to make resolutions and promises and to take vows.
The Ark celebrates above all four great Feasts, posed at the four corners of the year: Christmas,
Easter, the Feast of St. John the Baptist or summer solstice, and the feast of Michaelmas or autumn
252
equinox, at which time the Ark commemorates the Holy Vine of Noah.
Then we light a fire on the hill top, drums beat and song breaks out in untamed piety throughout
the night.
100.
Elements of Religious Reconciliation
The Order is not a religious Order. It is not an attempt to set up a new religion. It endeavours to
reconcile men, to purify their means of livelihood, to orient them toward spiritual life and initiate them
into the ways of Wisdom.
The Order has no intention of attacking, criticising, reforming or replacing any established Church.
It does not claim to reveal mans Final End and it teaches no new form of worship. It cannot, therefore,
clash with the Church, for the good reason that it does not put itself on the same level, but below, and
has no intention of trespassing in the domain of Dogma, Liturgy or the Sacraments.
The Order is like a father whose first care is to honour God. But when one wants to live a holy life,
one must first try to be honest and not be pious at someone elses expense.
Men of different religions can agree on this principle and live side by side in deep spiritual friendship, provided they consider that God is One, Unique and the Same, That-Which-is, in all that is, and
in the union of all who come together, provided they respect the heritage common to all the traditions
and abstain from discussion and judgement of the difference between them.
Our rule invites every man to become converted to his own religion, to convert himself, that is to
say, to pass from the profane to the religious or inner state. All religions are tolerated in the Order, but
not intolerance or irreligion.
With nonbelievers we do not argue either, nor do we preach to them. If they come to us, we turn
them to contemplation of their own soul. The image of God is there, the Kingdom of Heaven is in the
heart. May they see and touch what is. Why preach or argue?
101.
Elements of Political Reconciliation
Seeing that the social problem is fundamentally and definitively solved by the Patriarchal Order,
which has remained steadfast since the times of Seth, Enoch and Melchisedek, we have no part to play
in the excitement that sweeps the mob toward bloody revolution. For the same reason, we partake in
none of the works, none of the abuses, none of the instigation that leads to war.
We are strictly forbidden to profess political opinions, occupy official posts or seize power. Nor that
we turn away from the worlds affairs or despise our fellowmen or remain indifferent to their want, their
servitude and dissension. Our retreat is simply a means of seeing events from the distance indispensable
to correct judgement and to finding the right way out for all.
The aim of the Order is to create, within the nations, little islands of perfect life, not that we think
ourselves perfect or set ourselves up as an example. But if, imperfect as we are and in many ways
the last, we find the garden of Kingdom of Heaven here and now, the demonstration is all the more
convincing. Our aim is to multiply these little islands by emigrating from the mother community and
turning as many people as possible away from the mad philosophies of our time. Instead of exciting
them one against the other, nation against nation, class against class, party against party, religion against
religion without knowing what may result from the shock, we try to unify and pacify them here and
253
now, and to oppose peace to the agitation of the world.
102.
The Sevenfold Vow of the Companions
This is how the Companions recall their vow every evening after common prayer round the fire lit
under the stars.
The Companions alone say this prayer, arms crossed, hands flat on their breasts.
The Vow
God the Eternal, strong, just and good, let us never forget that we have taken the vow to
keep to and advance along the road of the seven accomplishments, which are:
1. Work
To give ourselves up to the service of our brothers, which begins with the work of
our hands, so as at least to burden no-one, and find a way out, for ourselves and other
people, from the afflictions, the abuses, the servitude and trouble of this age.
To work on ourselves, to exercise ourselves daily for the possession, the knowledge
and the gift of ourselves.
To work for the growth and continuance of the order by defending justice with the
weapons of justice, to respond to our vocation at all times, by teaching, missions and
foundations, by hospitality and good neighbourship, by care for dignity and beauty,
by contribution to the chapter, gatherings and feast-day celebrations.
2. Obedience
To conform to the rules and discipline of the Ark and to obey the leaders who serve
by their advice and their command, and to recall each other to obedience.
3. Responsibility
To accept full responsibility for our acts, to put right our misdeeds or make up for
them, to punish ourselves in place of our Companion shoud he refuse to admit he is
at fault and refuse to atone for it.
4. Purification
To purify ourselves from attachment, form mental dissipation, from pretension, prejudice, rancour and anger, from indifference, covetousness and pretence, from our
aversion, hate and connivance, from laziness ans cowardice, by fasting and penance,
the awakening of conscience and prayer.
5. Poverty
To live in a clean, simple and sober manner, to cherish poverty in order to advance
toward detachment and perfect charity.
6. Truth
To speak the truth with courage unless prudence, charity or respect compel us to
silence; to shun fraud, intrigue and gossip.
7. Non-violence
Not to afflict any human being nor, if possible, any living creature for pleasure, profit
or convenience. To settle conflict, to check oubursts ans to right wrongs by nonviolence, which is the power of truth; to convince, not vanquish; to reconcile, not
dominate; to conquer peace.
254
Grant us, Lord, to carry our Vow to the end; to know Thee, to love Thee, to serve
Thee; in short, to be.
AMEN
I shall make no comment on this vow which is to give oneself, to open hands till now always ready
to punch or grab; to open in praise a mouth always ready to bite the fruit and eat. The whole book is a
commentary, at once too long and insufficient. May our life and death complete it.
Easter, 1959
255

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The Four Scourges

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The Four

c 2002. Arche de Lanza del Vasto

Published with the help of LATEX 2 on Debian GNU/Linux.

I. Genesis of the Scourges and their Apocalypse

The Four Man-Made Scourges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Reformers and Preachers of Morals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Wrath of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pleasure and Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sin and Civilisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Pleasure of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Wisdom of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Wisdom of Arts and Crafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Sacrilege of the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Beast that rose up out of the Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Truth of Modern Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Worship of the Beast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Second Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Beast that rose up out of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The number six hundred and sixty-six . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

II. The Devil takes a Hand in the Game

The Spirit of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Innocence of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of Play and Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of Play and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Game of Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of Play and Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Noon at two oclock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Money Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of the Most Sacrilegious of Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of the Degradation of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of Mechanized Industry, another great game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of the Degradation by Leisure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of the Great Wrath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Devils Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of the Game of Evil and Nothingness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A Complementary Note on Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Horror and Contempt of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Part of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

III.Possession and the Possessed

How the Knowledge of Good and Evil engenders Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Possession engenders Want . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Why a Good is called a Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Malice of Wealth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Wretchedness of the Rich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Possession engenders War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

From Possession which is Power or Sovereignty to Possession which is Enjoyment . .

Confusing oneself with the thing possessed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Resulting Exaltation and Disappointment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Bloody Consequences of the Confusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

War between rich nations and poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Possession engenders Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Fraudulous Bankruptcy of Patrons and Philanthropists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wealth and Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Three Reasons for the Divorce of Wealth from Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Marxs Capital, and Value as Work incorporated in objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A remark that brings the whole thing tumbling down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

An average worker multiplied by n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Value the Power of Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Six Factors of Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ten Personages in Quest of Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Alienation of the Worker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Honesty of Liberal and Bourgeois Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Reason for Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Scientific Economy or Moral Mystification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .