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623 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1923
“Nietzsche did away with the idea of God, and replaced it by the concept of ideal man. That was nothing much – only a first step forward. It’s up to modern atheism to go one better and do away with the concept of ideal man as well.”
“Inequality, injustice! Of course they exist. Do those fellows imagine they’re the first to spot that interesting fact? But what’s to be done about it? Our present civilization is a datum, damn it! We’d do best to start by taking things as they really are instead of as they might have been. And their revolution?” he murmured sotto voce. “A fine mess they have in store for us. Smashing the whole show up, and starting all over again – like kids playing with toy bricks. They’d do better to get on with their jobs instead of wailing about the rotten state of society – and refusing to do their share in it…”
“A good bloodletting is necessary sometimes for a nation’s health. When there’s been a too long spell of peace, the world secretes a host of toxins which it has to get out of its system somehow, like the man who leads a too sedentary life. And just now, I believe, a good bloodletting will do the French morale a world of good.”
She cast on him a troubled gaze but so instinct with love that he walked up to her and unthinkingly stretched out his arms. Trembling, with closed eyes, she flung herself upon his breast. Their first embrace.