Innumerable apostles preaching their turbid doctrines in all
the factories and workshops, found hearers who were discontented and
easily carried away. The social democracy of the workmen was neither
a political nor economical programme which appealed to the
intellect, or could be proved or argued about, but rather an
instinct in which religious mysticism, good and bad impulses, needs,
emotional desires were wonderfully mingled. The men were filled with
enmity against those who had a large share of money; the new faith
dogmatically explained possession of property as a crime--that it
was meritorious to hate the possessor and necessary to destroy him.
They were made discontented with their limited destiny by the sight
of the world and its treasures; the new faith promised them a,
future paradise in the shape of an equal division of goods--a
paradise in which the hand was permitted to take whatever the eye
desired. They were disgusted by the consciousness of their deformity
and roughness, which dragged them down to the lowest rank in the
midst of school learning if not exactly knowledge; of good manners
if not good breeding; the new faith raised them in their own eyes,
declaring that they were the salt of the earth, that they alone were
useful and important parts of humanity; all others who did not labor
with their hands being miserable and contemptible sponges on
humanity.
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