are all brothers, and I live by receiving a salary for collecting the taxes from poor working men, to be used for the luxury of the idle and the rich. We are all brothers, and I receive a salary for preaching to people what is supposed to be the Christian religion, in which I do not believe myself, and which deprives them of the possibility of finding out the real faith. I receive a salary as a priest, a bishop, for deceiving people in what is the most important matter for them. We are all brothers, but I give to the poor my pedagogical, medical, literary labors for money only. We are all brothers, but I receive a salary for preparing myself to commit murder, studying how to kill, or making a gun, powder, fortresses.
The whole life of our higher classes is one solid contradiction, which is the more agonizing, the more sensitive man’s conscience is.
The man with a sensitive conscience cannot help but suffer, if he lives this life. There is one means by which he can free himself from this suffering—it consists in drowning his conscience; but even if such men succeed in drowning their conscience, they cannot drown their terror.