"I do not see the necessity of such ideals," said Leo. "I object to socialism because it would mean the absolute tyranny of the State, the despotism of a narrow and intolerant bureaucracy, tempered, as at present in Russia, by a more or less indiscriminate system of assassination. I have not the same objection to the tyranny of one man. A philosopher on the throne, Monsieur, your charming Marcus Aurelius for instance, may rule with wisdom and moderation; but an oligarchy of philosophers, like the Thirty at Athens: hell is naked before them and destruction hath no covering! Such experiments, as you say, infect the people with a lust for revolution. History, the only guide for political prophets, shows us that sudden disturbance of the social order breeds a whole series, whether such a disturbance occur among the ancient Greeks, or the Romans, or the French. The diverse natures of the peoples, the different conditions of the age in which they lived, and of their political methods do not alter the central fact. Humanity in the lump is a beast more terrible than any in Revelations."
"Ah, no!" cried Renan, with a sudden vivacity. "There is the chief glory of the human race. They will sacrifice themselves for an impossible ideal. None of us can contemplate that great tragedy of the French Revolution without feeling cleansed by it. The enthusiasm of the people has a kind of terrible grandeur. In such moments of divine delirium all men assume heroic proportions. We may pity it for its fanaticism; we may pity it for being so easily duped; but it is impossible to deny its magnificent devotion to an ideal."
"You consider it a great moral movement, Monsieur?"
"Moral because all petty egoisms were obliterated," answered Renan. "Men seemed for a moment to become the incarnations of ideas. Oh, on both sides. Charlotte Corday, Danton, Madame Roland, Robespierre, Desmoulins, Larochejacquelin; each individuality seems to have had its definite mission, each seems to have been equally necessary, equally an instrument of justice."
"You have said, Monsieur," continued Leo, after a pause, "that the socialists would revive in one form the twin tyrannies of Church and State, and destroy the ideal of individual liberty. You have also said that the ancient conception of Church and State was a unity. Would the kind of socialism which you sketch resemble the Greek State?"