Monday, 13 October 2008

A Tragic Destiny

“The feeling that springs spontaneously from an unprejudiced judgment of the history of humanity is compassion for the contradictory qualities of this poor human race of ours, so rich in abnegation, so ready at times for personal sacrifice, yet whose every attempt, whether more or less successful or not at all successful, to attain moral and material betterment, is coupled with an unleashing of hates, rancors and the basest passions. A tragic destiny is that of men! Aspiring ever to pursue and achieve what they think is the good, they ever find pretexts for slaughtering and persecuting each other. Once they slaughtered and persecuted over the interpretation of a dogma, or of a passage in the Bible. Then they slaughtered and persecuted in order to inaugurate the kingdom of liberty, equality and fraternity. Today they are slaughtering and persecuting and fiendishly torturing each other in the name of other creeds. Perhaps tomorrow they will slaughter and torment each other in an effort to banish the last trace of violence and injustice from the earth!”

Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class, tr. H.D. Kahn (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1939), p.198.

8 comments:

Sean Jeating said...

Good one, Mr. Deogowulf.

Mercurius Aulicus said...

Your Journal is certainly an Education, Mr Deogolwulf

James Higham said...

... or in pursuit of the revisionist ideal.

Sky Captain said...

So very true. This is the result of listening to any conscience but our own.

Deogolwulf said...

Mr Mosca is rather good on the modern state.

Dude said...

This book looks like a good companion for "The Revolt of the Masses"...

Anonymous said...

Was feminism "The Revolt of the Misses"?

Dude said...

'Twas indeed, missus.