Friday, May 13, 2005

Georges Bernanos, The European Spirit and the World of Machines (1946)

There is no instinct in man which cannot be turned against man and be made to destroy him. The instinct for justice, on the other hand, is perhaps the most destructive of all. Passing from reason to instinct, man in his concept of justice acquires a prodigious capacity for destruction. The instinct for justice isn't really justice any more than the sexual instinct is really love; it isn't even the desire for justice, but rather a savage lust, one of the most powerful forms that man's hatred of himself takes. The instinct for justice, when equipped with all the resources of technology, is capable of laying waste to the earth itself.

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