If the passion for equality potentially raises the average, it
_really_ degrades nineteen-twentieths of individuals below their former
place. There is a progress in the domain of law and a falling back in
the domain of art. And meanwhile the artists see multiplying before them
their _bete-noire_, the _bourgeois_, the Philistine, the presumptuous
ignoramus, the quack who plays at science, and the feather-brain who
thinks himself the equal of the intelligent.
"Commonness will prevail," as De Candolle said in speaking of the
graminaceous plants. The era of equality means the triumph of
mediocrity. It is disappointing, but inevitable; for it is one of time's
revenges. Humanity, after having organized itself on the basis of the
dissimilarity of individuals, is now organizing itself on the basis of
their similarity, and the one exclusive principle is about as true as
the other. Art no doubt will lose, but justice will gain. Is not
universal leveling-down the law of nature, and when all has been leveled
will not all have been destroyed? So that the world is striving with all
its force for the destruction of what it has itself brought forth. Life
is the blind pursuit of its own negation; as has been said of the
wicked, nature also works for her own disappointment, she labors at what
she hates, she weaves her own shroud, and piles up the stones of her own
tomb.
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