Chapter Chapter 199 · 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 possession of the interior of a man and is there

converted into evil.