Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/83

 much responsibility for the events of today. One man speaks, another acts; but the speakers do not move the others to action; they are all drifting with the tide. This unfortunate European thought is a bit of drift-wood like the rest, it does not make the current, it is carried along by it."

"It persuades people to yield to it," said Clerambault, "instead of helping the swimmers, and bidding them struggle against it; it says: Let yourself go.... No, my friend, do not try to diminish its responsibility, it is the greatest of all. Our thought had the best place from which to see; its business was to keep watch, and if it saw nothing, it was through lack of good-will, for it cannot lay the blame on its eyes, which are clear enough. You know it and so do I, now that I have come to my senses. The same intelligence which darkened my eyes, has now torn away the bandage; how can it be, at the same time, a power for truth and for falsehood?"

Perrotin shook his head.

"Yes, intelligence is so great and so high that she cannot put herself at the service of any other forces without derogation; for if she is no longer mistress and free, she is degraded. It is a case of Roman master debasing the Greek, his superior, and making him his purveyor--_Graeculus_, sophist, _Laeno_.... To the vulgar the intelligence is a sort of maid-of-all-work, and in this position she displays the sly, dishonest cleverness of her kind. Sometimes she is employed by hatred, pride, or self-interest, and then she flatters these little devils, dressing them up as Idealism, Love, Faith, Liberty, and social generosity; for when a man does not love his neighbour, he says he loves God, his Country, or even Humanity. Sometimes the poor master is himself a slave to the State. Under threat of punishment, the social machine forces him to acts which are repugnant, but the complaisant intelligence persuades him that these are fine and glorious, and performed by him of