Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/90

 official ties, they, at least should have the advantages of their independence; but unfortunately few of them are able to judge for themselves of events which are beyond the limits of their habitual preoccupations, commercial or aesthetic. The greater number, and not the least known, are as ignorant as fishes. It would be best for them to stick to their shop, according to their natural instinct; but their vanity has been foolishly tickled, and they have been urged to mix themselves up with public affairs, and give their opinion on the universe. They can naturally have but scattering views on such subjects, and in default of personal judgment, they drift with the current, reacting with extreme quickness to any shock, for they are ultra-sensitive, with a morbid vanity which exaggerates the thoughts of others when it cannot express their own. This is the only originality at their disposal, and God knows they make the most of it!

What remains? the Clergy? It is they who handle the heaviest explosives; the ideas of Justice, Truth, Right, and God; and they make this artillery fight for their passions. Their absurd pride, of which they are quite unconscious, causes them to lay claim to the property of God, and to the exclusive right to dispose of it wholesale and retail.

It is not so much that they lack sincerity, virtue, or kindness, but they do lack humility; they have none, however much they may profess it. Their practice consists in adoring their navel as they see it reflected in the Talmud, or the Old and New Testaments. They are monsters of pride, not so very far removed from the fool of legend who thought himself God the Father. Is it so much less dangerous to believe oneself His manager, or His secretary?

Clerambault was struck by the morbid character of the intellectual species. In the _bourgeois_ caste the power of organisation and expression of ideas has reached almost monstrous proportions. The equilibrium of life is d