Every assassination only makes the police more vicious and the people more accustomed to violence and brutality, and the last state of the community may be worse than the first."
"What do you think will happen when the revolution comes?
Do you suppose the people won't have to get accustomed to violence then?
War is war."
"Yes, but open revolution is another matter.
It is one moment in the people's life, and it is the price we have to pay for all our progress.
No doubt fearful things will happen; they must in every revolution. But they will be isolated facts--exceptional features of an exceptional moment.
The horrible thing about this promiscuous knifing is that it becomes a habit. The people get to look upon it as an every-day occurrence, and their sense of the sacredness of human life gets blunted.
I have not been much in the Romagna, but what little I have seen of the people has given me the impression that they have got, or are getting, into a mechanical habit of violence."
"Surely even that is better than a mechanical habit of obedience and submission."
"I don't think so. All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this one is ferocious as well.
Of course, if you look upon the work of the revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread.
But if you think, as I do, that to force the government's hand is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, and that what we really need to reform is the relation between man and man, then you must go differently to work.
Accustoming ignorant people to the sight of blood is not the way to raise the value they put on human life."
"And the value they put on religion?"
"I don't understand."
He smiled.
"I think we differ as to where the root of the mischief lies.
You place it in a lack of appreciation of the value of human life."
"Rather of the sacredness of human personality."
"Put it as you like.
To me the great cause of our muddles and mistakes seems to lie in the mental disease called religion."
"Do you mean any religion in particular?"
"Oh, no!
That is a mere question of external symptoms.
The disease itself is what is called a religious attitude of mind. It is the morbid desire to set up a fetich and adore it, to fall down and worship something.
It makes little difference whether the something be Jesus or Buddha or a tum-tum tree.
You don't agree with me, of course.
You may be atheist or agnostic or anything you like, but I could feel the religious temperament in you at five yards.
However, it is of no use for us to discuss that. But you are quite mistaken in thinking that I, for one, look upon the knifing as merely a means of removing objectionable officials--it is, above all, a means, and I think the best means, of undermining the prestige of the Church and of accustoming people to look upon clerical agents as upon any other vermin."
"And when you have accomplished that; when you have roused the wild beast that sleeps in the people and set it on the Church; then----"
"Then I shall have done the work that makes it worth my while to live."
"Is THAT the work you spoke of the other day?"
"Yes, just that."
She shivered and turned away.
"You are disappointed in me?" he said, looking up with a smile.
"No; not exactly that. I am--I think--a little afraid of you."
She turned round after a moment and said in her ordinary business voice:
"This is an unprofitable discussion.
Our standpoints are too different.
For my part, I believe in propaganda, propaganda, and propaganda; and when you can get it, open insurrection."
"Then let us come back to the question of my plan; it has something to do with propaganda and more with insurrection."
"Yes?"
"As I tell you, a good many volunteers are going from the Romagna to join the Venetians.
We do not know yet how soon the insurrection will break out.
It may not be till the autumn or winter; but the volunteers in the Apennines must be armed and ready, so that they may be able to start for the plains directly they are sent for.
I have undertaken to smuggle the firearms and ammunition on to Papal territory for them----"
"Wait a minute. How do you come to be working with that set?
The revolutionists in Lombardy and Venetia are all in favour of the new Pope.
They are going in for liberal reforms, hand in hand with the progressive movement in the Church.