"Then it's no use doing anything--no use whatever."

"I don't say that," protested Michaelis gently. His vision of truth had
grown so intense that the sound of a strange voice failed to rout it this
time. He continued to look down at the red coals. Preparation for the
future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change
would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that
revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was
the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as
the education given to kings. He would have it advance its tenets
cautiously, even timidly, in our ignorance of the effect that may be
produced by any given economic change upon the happiness, the morals, the
intellect, the history of mankind. For history is made with tools, not
with ideas; and everything is changed by economic conditions--art,
philosophy, love, virtue--truth itself!

The coals in the grate settled down with a slight crash; and Michaelis,
the hermit of visions in the desert of a penitentiary, got up
impetuously. Round like a distended balloon, he opened his short, thick
arms, as if in a pathetically hopeless attempt to embrace and hug to his
breast a self-regenerated universe. He gasped with ardour.

"The future is as certain as the past--slavery, feudalism, individualism,
collectivism. This is the statement of a law, not an empty prophecy."

The disdainful pout of Comrade Ossipon's thick lips accentuated the negro
type of his face.

"Nonsense," he said calmly enough. "There is no law and no certainty.