The Lowest Depths — Les Misérables

There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined. Each one is for himself. The I in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles, and gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf. The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress. They are ignorant both of the idea and of the word. They take no thought for anything but the satisfaction of their individual desires. They have two mothers, both stepmothers: ignorance and misery. They have a guide, necessity, and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious, ferocious after the fashion of the tiger. From suffering these spectres pass to crime. Fatal affiliation. Logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lower level is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute. It is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty: that is the point of departure. To be Satan: that is the point reached.

We have just seen one of the compartments of the upper mine, the great political, revolutionary, and philosophical excavation. There, all is pure, noble, dignified, honest. Error is worthy of veneration there, so thoroughly does it imply heroism. The work there effected has a name: Progress. The moment has now come when we must take a look at other depths, hideous depths. There exists beneath society, and there will exist until ignorance shall be dissipated, the great cavern of evil. This cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is hatred, without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers. Its dagger has never cut a pen. Its blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night under this stifling ceiling turned the leaves of a book. This cavern has for its object the destruction of everything, including the upper mines, which it execrates. It undermines the social order, philosophy, human thought, civilization, revolution, progress. It is darkness, and it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance.

All the others, those above it, have but one object: to suppress it. Destroy the cavern Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime. Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written. The only social peril is darkness. Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, here below at least, in predestination. The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with the human paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possession of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil.