Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/279

Rh moment perhaps the religion of the future is being created … and we have no part in it. I envy wise Kimri who saw beneath the earth. It is there that everything is prepared, it is there that we must look." There is in these words nothing that the theorists of the class-war could not approve of; in them I find the commentary to what Renan said a little later on the subject of "the springs of life ever forcing their way to the surface"; regeneration is being brought about by a class which works subterraneously, and which is separating itself from the modern world as Judaism did from the ancient world.

Whatever the official sociologists may think, the lower classes are by no means condemned to live on the crumbs which the upper classes let fall; we are glad to see Renan protest against this imbecile doctrine. Syndicalism claims to create a real proletarian ideology, and whatever the middle-class professors say of it, historical experience, as proclaimed by the mouth of Renan, tells us that this is quite possible, and that out of it may come the salvation of the world. The syndicalist movement is really being developed underground; the men who devote themselves to it do not make much noise in the world; what a difference between them and the former leaders of democracy, whose sole aim was the conquest of power!

These men were intoxicated by the hope that the chances of life might some day make them republican princes. While waiting for the wheel of fortune to turn to their advantage in this way, they obtained the moral and material advantages that celebrity procures for all virtuosi, in a society which is accustomed to paying well those who amuse it. The chief motive force behind many of them was their immeasurable pride, and they fancied that, as their name was bound to shine with singular brilliancy in the annals of humanity, they might buy that future glory by a few sacrifices.

None of these motives for action exist for the Syndicalists