CHAPTER I--MINES AND MINERS

  Human societies all have what is called in theatrical parlance, _a thirdlower floor_. The social soil is everywhere undermined, sometimes forgood, sometimes for evil. These works are superposed one upon the other.There are superior mines and inferior mines. There is a top and abottom in this obscure sub-soil, which sometimes gives way beneathcivilization, and which our indifference and heedlessness trample underfoot. The Encyclopedia, in the last century, was a mine that wasalmost open to the sky. The shades, those sombre hatchers of primitiveChristianity, only awaited an opportunity to bring about an explosionunder the Cæsars and to inundate the human race with light. For in thesacred shadows there lies latent light. Volcanoes are full of a shadowthat is capable of flashing forth. Every form begins by being night. Thecatacombs, in which the first mass was said, were not alone the cellarof Rome, they were the vaults of the world.

  Beneath the social construction, that complicated marvel of a structure,there are excavations of all sorts. There is the religious mine, thephilosophical mine, the economic mine, the revolutionary mine. Such andsuch a pick-axe with the idea, such a pick with ciphers. Such anotherwith wrath. People hail and answer each other from one catacomb toanother. Utopias travel about underground, in the pipes. There theybranch out in every direction. They sometimes meet, and fraternizethere. Jean-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him hislantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there. Calvin seizes Sociniusby the hair. But nothing arrests nor interrupts the tension of all theseenergies toward the goal, and the vast, simultaneous activity, whichgoes and comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities,and which immense unknown swarming slowly transforms the top and thebottom and the inside and the outside. Society hardly even suspects thisdigging which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. Thereare as many different subterranean stages as there are varying works,as there are extractions. What emerges from these deep excavations? Thefuture.

  The deeper one goes, the more mysterious are the toilers. The workis good, up to a degree which the social philosophies are able torecognize; beyond that degree it is doubtful and mixed; lower down,it becomes terrible. At a certain depth, the excavations are no longerpenetrable by the spirit of civilization, the limit breathable by manhas been passed; a beginning of monsters is possible.

  The descending scale is a strange one; and each one of the rungs of thisladder corresponds to a stage where philosophy can find foothold, andwhere one encounters one of these workmen, sometimes divine, sometimesmisshapen. Below John Huss, there is Luther; below Luther, there isDescartes; below Descartes, there is Voltaire; below Voltaire, thereis Condorcet; below Condorcet, there is Robespierre; below Robespierre,there is Marat; below Marat there is Babeuf. And so it goes on. Lowerdown, confusedly, at the limit which separates the indistinct from theinvisible, one perceives other gloomy men, who perhaps do not exist asyet. The men of yesterday are spectres; those of to-morrow are forms.The eye of the spirit distinguishes them but obscurely. The embryonicwork of the future is one of the visions of philosophy.

  A world in limbo, in the state of fotus, what an unheard-of spectre!

  Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier, are there also, in lateral galleries.

  Surely, although a divine and invisible chain unknown to themselves,binds together all these subterranean pioneers who, almost always, thinkthemselves isolated, and who are not so, their works vary greatly, andthe light of some contrasts with the blaze of others. The first areparadisiacal, the last are tragic. Nevertheless, whatever may be thecontrast, all these toilers, from the highest to the most nocturnal,from the wisest to the most foolish, possess one likeness, and thisis it: disinterestedness. Marat forgets himself like Jesus. Theythrow themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think not ofthemselves. They have a glance, and that glance seeks the absolute. Thefirst has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last, enigmatical though hemay be, has still, beneath his eyelids, the pale beam of the infinite.Venerate the man, whoever he may be, who has this sign--the starry eye.

  The shadowy eye is the other sign.

  With it, evil commences. Reflect and tremble in the presence of any onewho has no glance at all. The social order has its black miners.

  There is a point where depth is tantamount to burial, and where lightbecomes extinct.

  Below all these mines which we have just mentioned, below all thesegalleries, below this whole immense, subterranean, venous system ofprogress and utopia, much further on in the earth, much lower thanMarat, lower than Babeuf, lower, much lower, and without any connectionwith the upper levels, there lies the last mine. A formidable spot.This is what we have designated as the _le troisième dessous_. It is thegrave of shadows. It is the cellar of the blind. _Inferi_.

  This communicates with the abyss.