第43章

`You can be facetious, I see,' the latter observed, carelessly.`That's all right.It may enliven your oratory at socialistic congresses.But this room is no place for it.It would be infinitely safer for you to follow carefully what I am saying.As you are being called upon to furnish facts instead of cock-and-bull stories, you had better try to make your profit off what I am taking the trouble to explain to you.The sacrosanct fetish of today is science.Why don't you get some of your friends to go for that wooden-faced panjandrum - eh? Is it not part of these institutions which must be swept away before the F.P.comes along?'

Mr Verloc said nothing.He was afraid to open his lips lest a groan should escape him.

`This is what you should try for.An attempt upon a crowned head or on a president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much as it used to be.It has entered into the general conception of the existence of all chiefs of state.It's almost conventional - especially since so many presidents have been assassinated.Now let us take an outrage upon - say, a church.

Horrible enough at first sight, no doubt, and yet not so effective as a person of an ordinary mind might think.No matter how revolutionary and anarchist in inception, there would be fools enough to give such an outrage the character of a religious manifestation.And that would detract from the especial alarming significance we wish to give to the act.A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would suffer in the same way from the suggestion of non-political passion; the exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social revenge.All this is used up; it is no longer instructive as an object lesson in revolutionary anarchism.Every newspaper has ready-made phrases to explain such manifestations away.I am about to give you the philosophy of bomb throwing from my point of view; from the point of view you pretend to have been serving for the last eleven years.I will try not to talk above your head.The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are soon blunted.Property seems to them an indestructible thing.You can't count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long.A bomb outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism.It must be purely destructive.It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any other object.You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation.But how to get that appallingly absurd notion into the heads of the middle classes so that there should be no mistake? That's the question.By directing your blows at something outside the ordinary passions of humanity is the answer.Of course, there is art.A bomb in the National Gallery would make some noise.

But it would not be serious enough.Art has never been their fetish.It's like breaking a few back windows in a man's house; whereas, if you want to make him really sit up, you must try at least to raise the roof.There would be some screaming of course, but from whom? Artists - art critics and such like - people of no account.Nobody minds what they say.But there is learning - science.Any imbecile that has got an income believes in that.He does not know why, but he believes it matters somehow.It is the sacrosanct fetish.All the damned professors are radicals at heart.Let them know that their great panjandrum has got to go, too, to make room for the Future of the Proletariat.A howl from all these intellectual idiots is bound to help forward the labours of the Milan Conference.They will be writing to the papers.Their indignation would be above suspicion, no material interests being openly at stake, and it will alarm every selfishness of the class which should be impressed.They believe that in some mysterious way science is at the source of their material prosperity.They do.And the absurd ferocity of such a demonstration will affect them more profoundly than the mangling of a whole street - or theatre - full of their own kind.

To that last they can always say: "Oh! it's mere class hate." But what is one to say to an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in fact, mad? Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes.Moreover, I am a civilized man.I would never dream of directing you to organize a mere butchery, even if I expected the best results from it.But I wouldn't expect from a butchery the result I want.Murder is always with us.It is almost an institution.The demonstration must be against learning - science.But not every science will do.The attack must have all the shocking senselessness of gratuitous blasphemy.Since bombs are your means of expression, it would be really telling if one could throw a bomb into pure mathematics.But that is impossible.I have been trying to educate you; I have expounded to you the higher philosophy of your usefulness, and suggested to you some serviceable arguments.The practical application of my teaching interests you mostly.But from the moment I have undertaken to interview you I have also given some attention to the practical aspect of the question.What do you think of having a go at astronomy?'

For some time already Mr Verloc's immobility by the side of the armchair resembled a state of collapsed coma - a sort of passive insensibility interrupted by slight convulsive starts, such as may be observed in the domestic dog having a nightmare on the hearthrug.And it was in an uneasy, doglike growl that he repeated the word:

`Astronomy.'

He had not recovered thoroughly as yet from the state of bewilderment brought about by the effort to follow Mr Vladimir's rapid, incisive utterance.