By educating the individual the State must teach that it is not shameful, but a regrettable misfortune, to be ailing and weakly, but that it is criminal, and there¬ fore shameful, to bring dishonour on the misfortune through selfishness if a man burdens an innocent being with his own misfortune ; whereas it is proof of high nobility of feeling and humanity worthy of admiration if a sickly but innocent man renounces having a child of his own and transfers his love and tenderness to some poor strange infant, whose healthy nature gives promise of becoming a strong member of a strong community. By this work of education the State should crown its practical activities in their intellectual aspect. Its action should go on, unaffected by consideration whether the work is understood or misunderstood, popular or unpopular.
It must be made possible for the national con¬ sciousness in the matrimonial State to bring into being a more glorious epoch, in which men no longer give all their attention to improving the breeds of horses, dogs i6o MY STRUGGLE and cats, but rather to raising the condition of man, and in which one man silently practices renunciation with knowledge, whilst another rejoices in sacrificing and giving.
This ought not to be impossible in a world where hundreds of thousands of men voluntarily give them¬ selves up to celibacy, bound by nothing but the com¬ mands of a Church.
If a generation suffers under failings which it knows of, and indeed admits, and if it contents itself, as is the case to-day with our bourgeois world, with lightly declaring that nothing can be done about it, such a society is doomed to destruction.
No, we must all of us refuse to give in to this decep¬ tion. Our present bourgeoisie is now too bad and unfit to deal with any great task for humanity. It is too bad—not, in my opinion, from deliberate depravity, but from colossal indolence and all that springs from it. It is long since