"How did you know it?"--and his resistance having broken down, he confessed the despair hidden under his aggressive determination to believe and act. He was eaten up with pessimism, a natural consequence of his excessive idealism which had been so cruelly disappointed. The religious souls of former times were tranquil enough; they placed the kingdom of God so far away that no event could touch it; but those of today have established it on earth, by the work of human love and reason, so that when life deals a blow at their dream all life seems horrible to them. There were days when Moreau was tempted to cut his throat! Humanity seemed made of rotteness; he saw with despair the defeats, failures, flaws carved on the destiny of the race from the very beginning--the worm in the bud--and he could not endure the idea of this absurd and tragic fate, which man can never escape. Like Clerambault, he recognized the poison which is in the intelligence, since he had it in his veins, but unlike his elder, who had passed the crisis and only saw danger in the irregularity of thought and not in its essence, Moreau was maddened by the idea that the poison was a necessary part of intelligence. His diseased imagination tortured him by all sorts of bugbears; thought appeared to him as a sickness, setting an indelible mark on the human race; and he pictured to himself in advance all the cataclysms to which it led. Already, thought he, we behold reason staggering with pride before the forces that science has put at her disposal--demons of nature, obedient to the magical formulas of chemistry and distracted by this suddenly-acquired power, turning to self-destruction. Nevertheless Moreau was too young to remain in the grip of these terrors. He wanted action at any price, anything sooner than to be left alone with them. Why not urge him to act, instead of trying to hold him back? "My dear boy," said Clerambault, "it is not right to urge another man to a dangerous act, unless you are ready to share it. I have no use for agitators, even if they are sincere, who send others to the stake and do not set the example of martyrdom themselves. There is but one truly sacred type of revolutionary, the Crucified; but very few men are made for the aureole of the cross. The trouble is that we always assign duties to ourselves which are superhuman or inhuman. It is not good for the ordinary man to strive after the "_Uebermenschheit_," and it can only prove to him a source of useless suffering; but each man can aspire to shed light, order, peace, and kindness around him in his little circle; and that should be happiness enough." "Not quite enough for me," said Moreau. "Doubt would creep in; it must be all or nothing."