CHAPTER II

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.