"Democracy, Public Opinion, Freedom of the Press,--the idolatrous tritheism of a corrupt generation. Through the Institution of Democracy you have bound yourself with invincible chains to a political system which is the government of the best, by the worst, for the few,--in other words, the suppression of the intelligent few by the mob for the bosses. By the Institution of Public Opinion you have made Democracy permanent, preventing forever the rule of the 'saving remnant.' You have founded your unholy inquisition for the suppression of the martyrs to wisdom, and by your Institution of the Freedom of the Press you have raised a tyranny, an irresponsible hierarchy of godless demagogues, an impeccable final authority which will suppress, as it suppresses now, all honourable freedom of thought. You have broken and destroyed the power of the Church, and you are proud thereof; but beware! for in its place you have builded a Power, more widespread, more overwhelming, more irresistible. Though you crushed Democracy and discredited Public Opinion, yet so long as the Freedom of the Press remained in existence, Journalism would by its bull of deposition, its anathema of excommunication, extinguish your labour in a breath. "Here is your triple-headed Cerberus that bars your exit from this hades you have made. Until he is slain you may never escape. Slain? You cannot slay him; he is sheathed in an impenetrable hide, proof against all assaults. Listen, only in one way may you pass by him. Wait! In a little time his three horrid heads will growl with rising fury each to each, over the enormous spoils of decaying life. Wait! and the growls will grow fierce and more furious; and at last in mortal and horrible combat the beast will strive with _itself_, spreading chaos and death around. So will it disable itself; and when at last its triple head has collapsed in ghastly exhaustion, then will the time have come: pile upon it the hoary boulders of experience left by immemorial glaciers of time; raise them into a mountain, and though, like imprisoned Titan, the horrid beast bellows and thunders below, you may go forth fearlessly, and on the dread ruin he has wrought build a new civilisation, a new life." Aurelian's ardent eyes gazed on the man before him through the writhing smoke in the pallid dawn; his voice was like the voice of a velvet bell. "Yes, it is the end of years; the era of action is over, night follows, blotting from sight the shame of a wasted world; but through the mute, unutterable night rises and brightens the splendour of the new day, the new life. Action has striven and failed, and wreck and ruin are the ending thereof; but across the desert of failure and despair bursts the flame of the Dawn; the far-forgotten spirit of the world rises toward dominion again,--the spirit of visions and dreams, the mighty Mother of worlds and men, the Soul of the Eternal East."