Escaped
from torment, on all fours in the deep grease of the ground, he
lifted his leper-like face and looked hungrily before him into
infinity.
He looked and looked. He was trying to open the gates of heaven.
* * * * * *
"The peoples of the world ought to come to an understanding, through
the hides and on the bodies of those who exploit them one way or
another. All the masses ought to agree together."
"All men ought to be equal."
The word seems to come to us like a rescue.
"Equal--yes--yes--there are some great meanings for justice and
truth. There are some things one believes in, that one turns to and
clings to as if they were a sort of light. There's equality, above
all."
"There's liberty and fraternity, too."
"But principally equality!"
I tell them that fraternity is a dream, an obscure and uncertain
sentiment; that while it is unnatural for a man to hate one whom he
does not know, it is equally unnatural to love him. You can build
nothing on fraternity. Nor on liberty, either; it is too relative a
thing in a society where all the elements subdivide each other by
force.
But equality is always the same. Liberty and fraternity are words
while equality is a fact. Equality should be the great human
formula--social equality, for while individuals have varying values,
each must have an equal share in the social life; and that is only
just, because the life of one human being is equal to the life of
another.
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