nothing of the kind took place. All the young men of all Europe are year after year subjected to this trial, and with the rarest exceptions they all renounce everything which is and can be sacred to a man, they all express their readiness to kill their brothers, even their fathers, at the command of the first erring man who is clad in a red livery embroidered with gold, and all they ask is when and whom to kill. And they are ready.
Every savage has something sacred for which he is prepared to suffer and for which he will make no concessions. But where is this sacredness for a man of our time? He is told, “Go into slavery to me, into a slavery in which you have to kill your own father,” and he, who very frequently is a learned man, who has studied all the sciences in a university, submissively puts his neck into the yoke. He is dressed up in a fool’s attire, is commanded to jump, to contort his body, to bow, to kill—and he does everything submissively. And when he is let out, he returns briskly to his former life and continues to talk of man’s dignity, liberty, equality, and fraternity.