"The most civilized nations are tending toward it."

"Yes, but only as a means of seeking their welfare."

"Science is more eternal, it's more human, it's more
universal!" exclaimed the youth in a transport of enthusiasm. "Within a
few centuries, when humanity has become redeemed and enlightened, when
there are no races, when all peoples are free, when there are neither
tyrants nor slaves, colonies nor mother countries, when justice rules
and man is a citizen of the world, the pursuit of science alone will
remain, the word patriotism will be equivalent to fanaticism, and he
who prides himself on patriotic ideas will doubtless be isolated as
a dangerous disease, as a menace to the social order."

Simoun smiled sadly. "Yes, yes," he said with a shake of his head,
"yet to reach that condition it is necessary that there be no
tyrannical and no enslaved peoples, it is necessary that man go about
freely, that he know how to respect the rights of others in their own
individuality, and for this there is yet much blood to be shed, the
struggle forces itself forward. To overcome the ancient fanaticism
that bound consciences it was necessary that many should perish in
the holocausts, so that the social conscience in horror declared
the individual conscience free. It is also necessary that all answer
the question which with each day the fatherland asks them, with its
fettered hands extended! Patriotism can only be a crime in a tyrannical
people, because then it is rapine under a beautiful name, but however
perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue among
oppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice,
of liberty, of personal dignity--nothing of chimerical dreams, of