2.M.7.2. THE LOWEST DEPTHS
THERE disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely
outlined; each one is for himself. The I in the eyes
howls,
seeks, fumbles, and gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf.
The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts,
almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress;
they are ignorant both of the idea and of the word; they take
no thought for anything but the satisfaction of their individual
desires. They are almost unconscious, and there exists
within them a sort of terrible obliteration. They have two
mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance and misery. They have
a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite.
They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not after
the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger.
>From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation,
dizzy creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the
social third lower level is no longer complaint stifled by the
absolute; it is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a
dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty — that is the point of
departure;
to be Satan — that is the point reached. From that
vault Lacenaire emerges.
We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments
of the upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary, and
philosophical excavation. There, as we have just said, all is
pure, noble, dignified, honest. There, assuredly, one might be
misled; but error is worthy of veneration there, so thoroughly
does it imply heroism. The work there effected, taken as a
whole has a name: Progress.
The moment has now come when we must take a look at
other depths, hideous depths. There exists beneath society,
we insist upon this point, and there will exist, until that day
when ignorance shall be dissipated, the great cavern of evil.
This cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is
hatred,
without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers; its
dagger has never cut a pen. Its blackness has no connection
with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the
fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling,
turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf
is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to
Schinderhannes.
This cavern has for its object the destruction of
everything.
Of everything. Including the upper superior mines, which
it execrates. It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming,
the actual social order; it undermines philosophy, it undermines
human thought, it undermines civilization, it undermines
revolution, it undermines progress. Its name is simply
theft, prostitution, murder, assassination. It is darkness, and
it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance.
All the others, those above it, have but one object — to
suppress
it. It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend,
with all their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of
the real, as well as by their contemplation of the absolute.
Destroy the cavern Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime.
Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have
just
written. The only social peril is darkness.
Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay.
There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination.
The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the
same ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with the human
paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possesssion
of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil.