"And there's one other point: Until we learn these lessons, we've got to see our strong men and women cut down by tuberculosis, we've got to stand by and watch a slaughter of innocent babies that makes Herod's little massacre look like a schoolboy's naughtiness. The socialists don't like the word 'violence.' The reality is in the air we breathe. The landlord wracks rent out of the poor by violence--no amount of legal drivel can hide the fact that every injustice of our present society is put through by the aid--on the treat--of police. The whole force of the state is back of the grafters. It's violence that drives people into the sweat-shops, that drives the boys to crime and the girls to prostitution. And all this deadly injustice will go on until we've learned the lessons of justice and liberty. Let us learn them as peacefully and legally as possible, but we must learn them. Blood isn't a nice thing to look at, but it isn't as unspeakably horrible as the sputum of tuberculosis." "What you are saying is rank anarchy," Braun protested. "I've told you a hundred times you can't scare me by calling names. 'Anarchy' is just as much a word of progress as 'Socialism.' I think you've got the best of it when it comes to a description and analysis of society and industrial development. But the Anarchists have got you backed off the map in the understanding of human motives and social impulses. "I'm an optimist, Yetta, about this social conflict. I don't think it matters much what form people give to their activity. The important thing is not to be neutral. The thing that is needed is a passion for righteousness. Once a person sees--really sees--the conflict between greed and justice, and enlists in the revolution, it doesn't matter much whether he goes into the infantry or cavalry or artillery. I see in society a ruling class growing fat off injustice, a great, lethargic mass, indifferent through ignorance, and a constantly growing army of revolt. Anybody who doubts the outcome is a fool. History does not record a single year which did not bring some victory for Justice. But a person's equally a fool--I mean you, Isadore--who tries to prophesy just how the war will be conducted. There isn't any omniscient general back of us, directing the campaign. The progress towards victory is the result of myriad efforts, uncoordinated, often conflicting. It is entirely irrational--just like evolution. The anthropoidal ape, sitting under a prehistoric palm tree and picking fleas off his better half, did not know how--through the ages--his offspring were going to become men. Even with our superior intellects, our ability to study the records of the past and guess into the future, we cannot presage the steps of the progress. The directing force is the instinctive common sense of life. It's a more mysterious force than any theological God. It's always on the job, always pushing life through new experiments, through 'variations' to the better form.