HOPE AND FEAR.1

      ....My heart is with you.

      My eye does not get weary looking at your flaming banner; my ear does not get tired listening to your powerful song....

      My heart is with you; man's hunger must be appeased, and he must have light; he must be free, and he must be his own master, master over himself and his work.

      And when you snap at the fist which is trying to strangle you, your voice, and your ardent protest, preventing you from being heard—I rejoice, praying that your teeth may be sharpened. And when you are marching against Sodom and Gomorrah, to tear down the old, my soul is with you, and the certainty that you must triumph fills and warms my heart and intoxicates me like old wine....

      And yet....

      And yet you frighten me.

      I am afraid of the bridled who conquer, for they are apt to become the oppressors, and every oppressor transgresses against the human soul....

      Do you not talk among yourselves of how humanity is to march, like an army in line, and you are going to sound for it the march on the road?

      And yet humanity is not an army.

      The strong are going forward, the magnanimous feel more deeply, the proud rise higher, and yet will you not lay down the cedar in order that it may not outgrow the grass?

      Or will you not spread your wings over mediocrity, or will you not shield indifference, and protect the gray and uniformly fleeced herd?

      You frighten me.

      As conquerors you might become the bureaucracy: to dole out to everybody his morsel, as is the usage in the poor-house; to arrange work for everybody as it is done in the galleys. And you will thus crush the creator of new worlds—the free human will, and fill up with earth the purest spring of human happiness—human initiative, the power which braves one against thousands, against peoples, and against generations? And you will systematize life and bid it to remain on the level of the crowd.

      And will you not be occupied with regulations: registrating, recording, estimating—or will you not prescribe how fast and how often the human pulse must beat, how far the human eye may look ahead, how much the ear may perceive, and what kinds of dreams the languishing heart may entertain?

      With joy in my heart I look at you when you tear down the gates of Sodom, but my heart trembles at the same time, fearing that you might erect on its ruins new ones—more chilling and darker ones.

      There will be no houses without windows; but fog will envelop the souls....

      There will be no empty stomachs, but souls will starve. No ear will hear cries of woe, but the eagle—the human intellect—will stand at the trough with clipped wings together with the cow and the ox.