“But how can we reject the visible, palpable protection of the policeman with his revolver, and depend on something invisible, impalpable—the public opinion? Does it still exist, or not? Above all else, we know the order of things in which we live. Be it good or bad, we know its defects and are used to it; we know how to act, what to do under present conditions; but what will happen when we reject them and depend on something invisible, impalpable, and entirely unknown?” And the uncertainty upon which men enter, when rejecting the known order of things, seems terrible to them.
It is all very well to be afraid of the uncertainty, when our position is firm and secure; but our position is not only not secure—we know for certain that we are standing on the brink of perdition.
If we have to be afraid of something, let us be afraid of what is really terrible, and not of what we only imagine to be terrible.
In our fear to make an effort to tear ourselves away from the conditions which ruin us, only because the future is not quite certain to us, we resemble the passengers of a sinking ship, who, for fear of stepping into a boat which is to take them to the shore, retreat to their cabins and refuse to come out from them; or those sheep which, out of fear of the fire which has enveloped the whole yard, press close under the penthouses and do not walk through the open gates.
How can we, who are standing on the threshold of a war of inner revolutions, which is terrifying by its wretchedness and destructiveness, and in comparison with which, as those who are preparing it say, the terrors of the year ’93 will be play, speak of a danger which is threatened us by the Dahomeans, the Zulus, etc. , who live far, far away, and do not think of attacking us, and by those few thousands of robbers, thieves, and murderers, whom we ourselves have stupefied and corrupted, and whose number is not at all diminishing as the result of all our courts, prisons, and capital punishments?