And when
the people complain that, in spite of their labor and precisely
because of their labor, misery devours them, when society asks
you for life, you recite acts of mercy! All your energy is
expended for conservatism, all your virtue vanishes in
aspirations! Like the Pharisee, instead of feeding your father,
you pray for him! Ah! I tell you, we possess the secret of your
mission: you exist only to prevent us from living. Nolite ergo
imperare, get you gone!
As for us, who view the mission of power from quite another
standpoint, and who wish the special work of government to be
precisely that of exploring the future, searching for progress,
and securing for all liberty, equality, health, and wealth, we
continue our task of criticism courageously, entirely sure that,
when we have laid bare the cause of the evils of society, the
principle of its fevers, the motive of its disturbances, we shall
not lack the power to apply the remedy.
% 1.--Of the function of machinery in its relations to liberty.
The introduction of machinery into industry is accomplished in
opposition to the law of division, and as if to reestablish the
equilibrium profoundly compromised by that law.
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