The more
complete, radical and prompt the destruction is, the more conscious
one is of one's strength. However great the obstacle, one is not
disposed to recede or stand still; one breaks away all the barriers
which men call good sense, humanity, justice, and the satisfaction of
breaking them down is great. To crush and to subdue becomes
voluptuous pleasure, to which pride gives keener relish, affording a
grateful incense of the holocaust which the despot consumes on his own
altar; at this daily sacrifice, he is both idol and priest, offering
up victims to himself that he may be conscious of his divinity. -
Such is Saint-Just, all the more a despot because his title of
representative on mission is supported by his rank on the Committee of
Public Safety: to find natures strained to the same pitch as his, we
must leave the modern world and go back to a Caligula, or to a caliph
Hakem in Egypt in the tenth century.[147] He also, like these two
monsters, but with different formulae, regards himself as a God, or
God's vicegerent on earth, invested with absolute power through Truth
incarnated in him, the representative of a mysterious, limitless and
supreme power, known as the People; to worthily represent this power,
it is essential to have a soul of steel.
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