by Joseph Roth
I said this to one of them, a man with kind eyes and an agreeable voice. He came from India. He replied: ‘Since you came to us with violence and trickery and brought us your alcohol and syphilis, but we didn’t come to you with trickery and violence, to defend ourselves we must speak with the words that you have taught us and fight with the weapons that you use.’
To which I answered that he had spoken much foolishness in two phrases but that that he had revealed his great folly mainly through the use of a couple of little words – namely ‘your’ and ‘you’. Since I had unfortunately not seen his country I couldn’t object to his regarding mine as he regarded his own. I also looked upon his country as I looked upon mine. If, perhaps, I were to bring some disease or other evil into his country I could no doubt assume that there were other diseases and evils that were common and native to that place. For we are all a mixture of virtue and sin. And it was precisely because all men were comprised in the same way of virtue and sin, strength and weakness, goodness and malice, disease and health, that I couldn’t comprehend why every country should be jealous of exactly those frailties, evils and diseases that it imagined were special and peculiar to itself. As far as I was concerned, at that moment, as we conversed one man to another, was he, I asked him, speaking with me or with my skin colour? For he used the plural pronoun when speaking to me, although I was only one person.
At this, he replied that he had become used to it because it was the people of my colour who had begun by addressing people of his colour in this way, saying ‘you’ and ‘your’ to them.
‘Let us assume,’ I said to him, ‘that there was a certain town, and in this town lived a great many murderers. Would you therefore address each citizen of the town as “you murderers” or say “among you murderers”? And,’ said I further, ‘I have read that in your country live many wise men. Am I to address everyone in your country as “you wise men”?’
‘I have seldom met anyone of your type,’ he said, thinking to compliment me.
With this I recognized him and told him that he seemed to be the twin brother of my employer – the wise Master of a Thousand Tongues. And then I said bluntly: ‘The Antichrist walks in your country also. And that is worse than syphilis.’
He seemed not to understand. He said nothing. As, however, he was concerned to reconcile me he searched, very much as the Antichrist would, not for a subject that we might both like but for one that he thought I would hate. And he said: ‘The worst are the half-breeds.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘the worst are those who would think and say such a thing. For we are all people, and when people come together with each other it is natural and the will of God that everything should happen between them that can occur between human beings. They can speak to one another, they can hate one another, they can love one another and they can sleep with one another. Love between a red man and a yellow woman is natural. For if nature didn’t wish this love to exist it would prevent them from bearing fruit. Since children spring from such a love these children are neither better nor worse than any others. When, however, two women or two men of the same colour love each other, this process goes against nature, even though people must obey the particular ways of their own bodies. There certainly exist within creation many phenomena that are subject not to the general laws of creation but to others of a special and remarkable kind. We have no right to condemn them. Neither do we have the right to see them as natural. That would be as if those who were born blind were considered to have the same sight as those who are not blind, merely because it is Nature itself that made them blind and not an accident. In this world, however, where the Antichrist blinds even those who can see, it comes to pass that people say: “An unnatural love between two white men is better and nobler than a natural love between a white man and a yellow woman.” And this is a twofold sin. For the infirm must bear their infirmities humbly, and a cripple cannot direct how the healthy should run. I know a man who has sexual intercourse with goats, but won’t give his hand to a Chinese man.’ Another person who heard me speak thusly came to me and said he could understand everything that I was thinking. For, although he came from a distant land, namely Japan, he was also in the service of a Master of a Thousand Tongues. And, like myself, he went everywhere that there was unrest in the world.
‘I’m older than you,’ said he. ‘I offer you this advice: never again speak as you did just now. In reality, there are other cares in your country, in mine, in all the countries where people live. There is a great outcry of the tormented of all races and within each race. To those who are poor and downtrodden, the colour of people’s skin is immaterial. He who has nothing to eat feels hungry. He who is beaten bleeds. The educated folk who say “We want to be masters in our own country” are actually already masters in their own countries. All they want to do is drive out of their countries those people who share the mastery with them. It is only the masters who come to these conferences; and we, who are sent here by the masters. There’s no point in getting too excited. Look at what happened to me. I was a soothsayer. I was never able to tell a lie. Only since I have been hired and paid to report the truth do I lie. And one day you also will act just as I do. Even if you refuse to lie, you will find your truths so disfigured that you would rather have lied yourself. Fare thee well!’ This he said and left me.
THE RED EARTH
Erasmus loved many of the things that we love; literature and philosophy, books and artworks, languages and peoples, and without distinction among them all, the whole of mankind … And there was only one thing on earth that he truly … hated -fanaticism. – Stefan Zweig, Erasmus of Rotterdam
Then I went to the country where, so I had been told, there was no longer an outcry from the poor and downtrodden; people were concerned to let truth, justice and reason shine forth; gold, the metal of the Antichrist, had been conquered; and people had a natural respect for every single human life, and each was sacred.
So I came to the capital city of this land. It is an old town, a pretty, expansive city with many hundreds of old churches. If one looks down upon this city from a high vantage point one sees the green arches and cupolas scattered like giant jewels between flat and pointed roofs. Each century seems to have contributed to the making of this city’s jewels.
I visited many of these cupolas and the churches over which they vault their arches, and I saw that in many of the churches people no longer prayed and that the bells had been removed from the belfries and the crosses from the cupolas and from the walls inside.
‘We have placed God at a distance,’ I was told by a number of people. ‘Let others copy us if they please! We have, as you can see for yourself, not only abolished wealth, gold, the emperor and the executioner but swept Heaven clean of all the filth that had collected there during the course of history. Now the earth is clean and the sky is empty.’
And so the deed was done. They had taken up two brooms in their hands, one for sweeping the earth and one for sweeping the heavens. And they had even given the brooms names. The one was called Revolution, and the other was called Human Reason.
Yet there were many in this land who did not approve of one or the other or even both of these brooms.
Some of these people could truly believe that the earth was now clean because they could see the earth.
But as they could not see Heaven they mistrusted the broom that was called Human Reason.
‘If you mistrust your own reason,’ the sweepers informed them, ‘it’s because you don’t have enough of it.’
‘But maybe,’ replied the others, ‘you trust reason so much because you yourselves possess so little of it. And perhaps you have more than us, but it’s possible there exists something other than human reason, namely a divine reason. And your own superior reason is no better than our poor reason at recognizing this divine reason. You think you know, but we believe.’
‘And even if you are right,’ replied the sweepers, ‘and even if there is really a divine reason that is supe
rior to ours, we still cannot let it prevail any longer. For you must remember that our last oppressors appealed to this unknowable divine reason and that they oppressed us in its name.’
‘We don’t deny that,’ answered the wiser among the faithful. ‘It was the sin of the oppressors that they brazenly proclaimed that they alone (and not us) could know the intentions of the divine will. And if they could really do so then it was a double sin to oppress us by appealing to this knowledge. For, as minimal as our knowledge is, yet all the faithful know this one thing, that God doesn’t want oppression. And we were also foolish when we believed that the powerful knew more about divine purposes than did we. That was our fault. We admit it.
‘But at the very least you are guilty of denying something about which you are uncertain – is it there, or isn’t it there? Do you know, for example, from whence man comes and to whence he goes? Do you know what happened before your birth and what will happen after your death? Have you already spoken with someone who is dead or with someone not yet born?’
The sweepers said: ‘Even if we could talk with those who aren’t yet born or those who have died, we wouldn’t do so. We have too much concern about the misery of the living. We don’t have as much time as you do. We follow the maxim: Religion is the opium of the people.’
‘Now,’ said the wiser among the faithful, ‘although you have no time we can wait. For we have time. We have until the end of time.’
And the faithful went to pray.
But they were not left in peace. It was remarkable that exactly those people who had said they had no time to speak with the dead, even if they could do so, still found time to disturb the faithful. They wrote above the image of the Madonna, which was set up before one of the gates of the broom-master’s palace, the phrase of their prophet: Religion is the opium of the people.
What a saying. Foolish like all sayings that have the strength to wheedle their way into the ears of men, as a popular song might. They are as far removed from wisdom as popular tunes are from real music. One could even turn this saying around, just as the verses of a hit song can be sung backwards without changing the musical sense. In this saying the words do not possess their original meaning but rather an applied one. It is the same with the sound of a popular song. One could turn the sense of the song into its opposite and it would sound just as flattering to the frivolous ear. One could, for example, say Unbelief is the opium of the people; or, if one wished, Opium is the religion of the rich; or perhaps The rich are the opium of religion; or maybe Those in power are the opium of the people; or, if one preferred, The powerful – and actually the powerful at any particular time and not religion – are the opium of the people. The words of a philosopher? Not a chance! It is the slogan of a parliamentarian!
This slogan was written above an image of the Madonna. But, regardless, many people prayed before this image each day. And it was as though they were asking the Mother of God for forgiveness for the slogan that had been placed over her image. And as there were no more rich people left in this country, those who came to kneel and pray before the Mother of God were poor. Poor by birth or had become so – whatever the reason, they were poor. And therefore – the people. The Mother of God was dignified in her apparent helplessness against the power of the catchphrase because she was visibly weak, and all that was left to her was the seemingly insignificant ability to attract those who were poor and mocked, in other words – the people! She promised nothing, she performed no miracles, she gave no speeches, she was mocked, and yet there were people who clung to her and allowed themselves to be persecuted for her sake.
They were all poor. And since, for one must be fair, in this country, everything possible was done for the people under the given circumstances, I asked myself why these poor people still prayed. Just what made them drift towards an unknown force, although they could see that the known powers were eager to help them? They must have been so distressed that they could not speak of it to the known and visible powers. One mother’s son was dying, and the doctors in the hospital were powerless against death. The doctors gave him real opium so that he would not suffer, and this was all they could do. A woman wanted to have a child, but enigmatic Nature gave her nothing. Another woman had not wanted to have the child she was carrying, and it pained her that she did not wish to bring it into the world. And there was a man who was weeping over his dead brother, whom the improved conditions of this world could not bring back. Still others were praying simply because their hearts were full. Without any reason. For even though the sweepers had cleared the earth of all kinds of garbage, people’s hearts could not be emptied of the inexplicable sorrow that often filled them. If the sweepers had been able, as was certainly their intention, to quench hunger and thirst, to provide shelter for all who had to sleep under the sky, to supply beds and medicine to the sick, crutches to the lame and guide dogs to the blind, there would still remain hearts that needed more, needed something that could never be provided by earthly powers. There are many who prefer unjust love to loveless justice. And they are not happy unless they are both loved and hurt.
For between that which constitutes man’s predictable happiness and that which constitutes his unpredictable happiness there is a wide gap that we cannot fill with our logical reasoning. We are made of flesh and spirit. A cat is contented simply with milk and butter, but a man is not satisfied for long after having eaten and drunk. And even if he is given books, taken to the theatre and his curiosity about earthly knowledge satisfied, there will always be a moment in which he asks, like the child he has never ceased to be: ‘Why? Why?’
There can be no answer to all of his questions. Not even when he asks: ‘Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?’
The people had previously been kept in blinkers. In this country, however, everyone thought that these questions would stop if only satisfactory replies were given to those questions that could be answered for the time being.
Those questions for which an answer could be found began to be placed before the citizens of the country, even when they had no wish to pose such questions themselves.
So the people were taught to pose questions but only those questions for which there was an answer at the ready.
Those questions that could not be answered, even when they were put into words, were left without an answer.
Because the people of this country were believers by nature, and because they had been forcibly kept in ignorance and blindness for many long years before the Revolution, the equally forceful attempt to grant them knowledge and education succeeded in surpassing through so-called natural wonders the supernatural wonders in which they were accustomed to believing.
The people there were kindly people. One could persuade them that the saints in Heaven concerned themselves about a sick cow and a lame calf.
When veterinarians came to treat the sick cattle, it was proved that an ordinary animal doctor could do more than a saint.
In the villages in the southern portion of this great country the people believe, for example, that the prophet Elijah makes thunder, lightning and rain. And when the fields needed a storm, the people prayed to St Elijah.
On the day of this holy one’s feast the authorities who had swept Heaven empty decided to prove to the peasants in the villages that storms are not caused by saints. They sent experts to the villages on that very day, equipped with a number of scientific apparatus. These experts showed the people the scientific laws of thunder, lightning and storms.
When the poor people now saw that men could produce storms using machines they stopped (although not all at once) believing in the power of St Elijah.
However, they did begin to believe in the power of the apparatus and the supernatural power of the men who used it. Since it was a dry summer, and the fields could have used a storm, they asked these educated men to create a proper storm.
‘This apparatus is too small for all the vast fields,’ said the learned men. The people would have to wait until someone bu
ilt a bigger machine.
This answer, or excuse, was so crafty that I was seized by the desire to speak with such clever men.
I told them that they must have realized that they had lied.
‘Naturally we lied!’ they replied. ‘Because we had to drive Elijah out of the peasants even at the price of a lie. From St Elijah to the Tsar is only one step.’ I asked them what then did they believe – that the Tsar had supported the saint or vice versa? And why wasn’t it possible to understand an apparatus and also venerate the holy? And were the saints the foes of science? And weren’t they aware that it is human nature to replace each saint that has been taken away with a new one? And does the so-called blind faith in a saint have less value than blind faith in a man?
‘They don’t want a blind faith,’ said the learned ones in reply
‘But there is something worse,’ I said to them, ‘and that is blind knowledge. We have only two eyes to see with. Alas, there is so much to see in the world that we would require a thousand eyes. With our two poor eyes we cannot perceive all these things. And therefore we cannot say that we know all and can teach all. It is just as false to think that our eyes can see everything as it is to close them intentionally so that they can’t see anymore. None of us has seen St Elijah. But we don’t know whether we haven’t seen him because he isn’t there or because we are simply unable to see him.’
The gentlemen laughed and said that they had worries other than mine. They would speak with me again later after they had eliminated these other worries from the world.
Because, however, my worries were at their root the same as those of the peasants, I know that these gentlemen were not thinking logically. It is, in any case, easier to persuade the credulous through a scientific apparatus than to argue with believers.
