hope, or at any rate to make strong and widespread a hope which was
formerly confined to a few. This aspect of the movement is as easy to
grasp at a distance as it is in Russia--perhaps even easier, because
in Russia present circumstances tend to obscure the view of the
distant future. But the actual situation in Russia can only be
understood superficially if we forget the hope which is the motive
power of the whole. One might as well describe the Thebaid without
mentioning that the hermits expected eternal bliss as the reward of
their sacrifices here on earth.

I cannot share the hopes of the Bolsheviks any more than those of the
Egyptian anchorites; I regard both as tragic delusions, destined to
bring upon the world centuries of darkness and futile violence. The
principles of the Sermon on the Mount are admirable, but their effect
upon average human nature was very different from what was intended.
Those who followed Christ did not learn to love their enemies or to
turn the other cheek. They learned instead to use the Inquisition and
the stake, to subject the human intellect to the yoke of an ignorant
and intolerant priesthood, to degrade art and extinguish science for a
thousand years. These were the inevitable results, not of the
teaching, but of fanatical belief in the teaching. The hopes which
inspire Communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by
the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically, and are
likely to do as much harm. Cruelty lurks in our instincts, and
fanaticism is a camouflage for cruelty. Fanatics are seldom genuinely
humane, and those who sincerely dread cruelty will be slow to adopt a
fanatical creed. I do not know whether Bolshevism can be prevented
from acquiring universal power. But even if it cannot, I am persuaded
that those who stand out against it, not from love of ancient
injustice, but in the name of the free spirit of Man, will be the