nights and say to yourself: He's in this bed? Maybe you tell me he's as good as he can be under the circumstances. I dont see why any man should expect to be a man under the circumstances. Light is not darkness under the circumstances. Death is not life under the circumstances. Right is not wrong under the circumstances. Every man has to adjust the circumstances to himself. Dont tell me a man always has to adjust himself to the circumstances. A man's circumstance is his dirt. I am too familiar with your underlying assets to assent to this overlying result. Do I expect you to fight? Am I asking too much? Yes, fight. No: I am only asking enough. I see nothing preposterous in asking a man to be what he is. In asking beauty to be beautiful. In asking a song to sing. In asking gentleness to be gentle. In asking generosity to give. In asking the cloud to rain. In asking water to run down hill. In asking the fulfilment of life. What do I ask you for? For the fulfilment of life--that's all. I decline to call your wars and your exploitations and your greeds the fulfilment of life. They are rather the fulfilment of death. I decline to call the barbarism we call civilization the fulfilment of life. I decline to call the love we call marriage the fulfilment of life. I decline to call the pride we call art. Or the austerity we call science. Or the hypocrisy we call religion. I decline to call them the fulfilment of life. They are the fulfilment of death. I decline to call the hells the fulfilment of life. The hells of theology. The hells of profit and loss. The hells of owners and owned. The hells of poor and rich. The hells of those who have everything and those who have nothing. The hells of those who make everything the writ of the tax gatherer. I decline to call them the fulfilment of life. They are the fulfilment of death. I acknowledge your institutions. I do not dismiss property. I put dreams and people above all the lauded majesty of learning and possessions. No man is so little but his head is higher than your Oxfords and Harvards. No man is so degraded but he outshines the luster of bonds and trade. You say a man must make a living. I say no. That is already made for him here or somewhere. What a man must make is life. To make a living leaves us dirt still. To make life gives us wings. We want everybody to get out of the way of life. The world. The crowd. You. I. We must get out of the way of life. If the superman gets in the way of the underman he is in the way of life. He has sold his soul for dirt. Would I destroy civilization? Yes--if I could help civilization by doing so. Have you sold your soul for dirt? Have you traded down instead of up? I am pulling down the monuments. The great men. The masters. The leaders and superiors. The geniuses and the marvels. I shake them down in a common ruin. In order to rebuild greatness. In order to bring out of all what so far has been all brought out of some. I turn all values upside down.