this phallic worship. To the Italian the phallus is the symbol of
individual creative immortality, to each man his own Godhead. The child
is but the evidence of the Godhead.

And this is why the Italian is attractive, supple, and beautiful,
because he worships the Godhead in the flesh. We envy him, we feel pale
and insignificant beside him. Yet at the same time we feel superior to
him, as if he were a child and we adult.

Wherein are we superior? Only because we went beyond the phallus in the
search of the Godhead, the creative origin. And we found the physical
forces and the secrets of science.

We have exalted Man far above the man who is in each one of us. Our aim
is a perfect humanity, a perfect and equable human consciousness,
selfless. And we obtain it in the subjection, reduction, analysis, and
destruction of the Self. So on we go, active in science and mechanics,
and social reform.

But we have exhausted ourselves in the process. We have found great
treasures, and we are now impotent to use them. So we have said: 'What
good are these treasures, they are vulgar nothings.' We have said: 'Let
us go back from this adventuring, let us enjoy our own flesh, like the
Italian.' But our habit of life, our very constitution, prevents our
being quite like the Italian. The phallus will never serve us as a
Godhead, because we do not believe in it: no Northern race does.
Therefore, either we set ourselves to serve our children, calling them
'the future', or else we turn perverse and destructive, give ourselves
joy in the destruction of the flesh.