322 ESSAYS AND LETTERS
it supports the existing order of things and bids us diiFerentiate people, like the stars, and regard them as belonging to different orders — acknowledging any existing authority as ordained of God, and obeying it absolutely; in fact, suggesting to the oppressed that their position is what God wishes it to be, and that they ought to put up with it meekly and humbly, submitting to their oppressors, who need not be meek or humble, but should— as Emperors, Bangs, Popes, Bishops, and secular or spiritual magnates of various kinds — correct others by teaching and punishing them, while them- selves living in splendour and luxury which it is the duty of those in subjection to supply. And the ruling classes, thanks to this false teaching which they strongly support, rule over the people, obliging them to furnish means of support for their rulers^ idleness, luxury and vices. And the only men who have freed themselves from this hypnotism — the scientific people : those, there- fore, who alone are able to free the people from their oppression — do not do it, though they say they wish to ; but, instead of doing what might attain that end, they do just the opposite, imagining that they thereby serve the people.
One would think these men — even from casually ob- serving what it is that those who hold the masses in subjection are most afraid of — might see what really moves men, and what really keeps them down in the places they now occupy ; and would direct their whole force to that source of power. They not only do not do this, however, but they consider such action quite useless.
It is as if these men did not wish to see the facts. They assiduously, and sincerely, do all sorts of different things for the people, but they do not do the one thing primarily needful ; and their activity is like the activity of a man trying to move a train by exerting his muscles, when he need only get upon the engine and do what he constantly sees the engine-driver do : move a lever to let steam into the cylinders. That steam is men^s re- ligious conception of life. And they need only notice
