Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that It was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature. . . and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?
To crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible punishment so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character.
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.