CHAPTER II--THE LOWEST DEPTHS

  There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined; eachone is for himself. The _I_ in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles, andgnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf.

  The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almostphantoms, are not occupied with universal progress; they are ignorantboth of the idea and of the word; they take no thought for anythingbut the satisfaction of their individual desires. They are almostunconscious, and there exists within them a sort of terribleobliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance andmisery. They have a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction,appetite. They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, notafter the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger.From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation, dizzycreation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lowerlevel is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protestof matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty--thatis the point of departure; to be Satan--that is the point reached. Fromthat vault Lacenaire emerges.

  We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments of theupper mine, of the great political, revolutionary, and philosophicalexcavation. There, as we have just said, all is pure, noble, dignified,honest. There, assuredly, one might be misled; but error is worthy ofveneration there, so thoroughly does it imply heroism. The work thereeffected, taken as a whole has a name: Progress.

  The moment has now come when we must take a look at other depths,hideous depths. There exists beneath society, we insist upon this point,and there will exist, until that day when ignorance shall be dissipated,the great cavern of evil.

  This cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is hatred, withoutexception. This cavern knows no philosophers; its dagger has never cuta pen. Its blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of theinkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath thisstifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper.Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat toSchinderhannes. This cavern has for its object the destruction ofeverything.

  Of everything. Including the upper superior mines, which it execrates.It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming, the actual socialorder; it undermines philosophy, it undermines human thought, itundermines civilization, it undermines revolution, it underminesprogress. Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder, assassination.It is darkness, and it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance.

  All the others, those above it, have but one object--to suppress it.It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend, with all theirorgans simultaneously, by their amelioration of the real, as well as bytheir contemplation of the absolute. Destroy the cavern Ignorance andyou destroy the lair Crime.

  Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written.The only social peril is darkness.

  Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is nodifference, here below, at least, in predestination. The same shadowin front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards. Butignorance, mingled with the human paste, blackens it. This incurableblackness takes possession of the interior of a man and is thereconverted into evil.