. . . tyranny is just what one can develop a taste for, since it so happens that man prefers to wallow in fear rather than to face the anguish of being himself. Generalize the phenomenon and the Caesars appear: how to blame them, when they answer the requirement of our misery and the pleas of our cowardice? They even deserve to be admired: they fling themselves upon assassination, constantly brood upon it, accept its horrors and its ignominy, and devote all their thoughts to it, to the point of forgetting suicide and exile, less spectacular formulas though gentler and more agreeable. Having opted for the most difficult, they can flourish only in uncertain times, sustaining chaos or else throttling it. The epoch favorable to their advance coincides with the end of a cycle of civilization. This is obvious with regard to the ancient world, and it will be no less so with regard to ours, which is heading straight for a much more considerable tyranny than the one rampant in the first centuries of our era. The most elementary meditation on the historical process of which we are the result reveals that Caesarism will be the mode by which the sacrifice of our liberties will be consummated. If the continents are to be welded together, unified, it is force that will do the job, not persuasion; like the Roman empire, the one to come will be forged by the sword and will be established with our unanimous collaboration, since our very terrors demand it.
