Joseph Roth - The Antichrist

But people fear other people without cause; in fact, the fear people have of each other is not the consequence but the origin of their hostilities and wars. Animals fear humans. They fear them more than they fear their natural foes among the other animals. The strongest of the four-legged beasts of prey fears a snake’s venom, but both the serpent and the beast of prey fear man equally.

Since he is to be feared by all creation, man may truly be the master.

But, since he is also afraid of his own kind, he is thus not the absolute Lord of Creation.

If man were not afraid of his own kind he would have no fear of the tempter, of the Devil, of the Antichrist.

The Antichrist plants people’s fear of other people into their hearts so that he may not himself become weak.

He sows fear. And from this seed sprouts discord.

As one person fears another individual, so does one nation fear another nation.

And within each nation each of the individual citizens fears the other.

And as soon as all the individual members of a nation fear a neighbouring nation more than the individuals fear one another, war starts.

The soldier who goes to war fears his superior, but the superior and the soldier both fear the enemy, that is to say, the other nation, even more.

Therefore, there will never be peace in the world so long as the fear of men towards other men exists.

Similarly, the fear of God cannot grow in the world as long as man fears man more than he does God himself.

Truly, the Antichrist sows man’s fear of his own kind to prevent him from fearing God.

Fearing God, that is to say, not only loving God but also loving each other.

To fear man, however, is to hate man, to abandon God and to be in the presence of the Antichrist.

And this is the condition of the world today.

We are further than ever from the hour when the predator will befriend the prey.

Not even man can befriend his fellow man.

All the animals of creation fear humans. But people’s fear of one another today is even greater than animals’ fear of people.

For man knows frightfulness of his own kind better than animals.

This is the hour in which, as it is written, man is worse than a ferocious animal.

A man who claimed to be righteous came to me and said: ‘I come from the country where the Master of a Thousand Tongues, in whose service you have been, lives.’

‘Aren’t you going to return?’ I enquired. ‘They are lacking in righteous men there!’

‘They drove me out,’ said the false righteous man, ‘and others with me. In all other countries of the world righteous men are downtrodden and must suffer. But in this country they are banishing justice entirely. They are seating wrong upon the throne of right. They are removing the bandage from the eyes of Justice.’

‘So they are finally allowing her to see?’

‘No,’ replied the just man, ‘they aren’t removing the bandage so that she can see. Although even that would be false. For it is the nature of Justice to judge without seeing. Her delicate hands, which measure and weigh, are surer than the eye. She has to apply not the judgement of the eye, visual justice, but the scales, the judgement of the hands, manual justice. Truly, when Justice can see, she ceases to be Justice. But the unrighteous haven’t removed the bandage from her eyes to let her see! They have removed it in order to make her blind. They have poked out her eyes.

‘At that point the righteous left the country.

‘Yet we cannot abandon Justice, although we, the righteous have been driven out. And we endeavour to act justly towards the country that blinded her.

‘I have long wondered why these people poked out the eyes of Justice. And I believe I have discovered the reason: the people were acting foolishly, not wickedly. By no means do they understand the nature of Justice. From the beginning they had feared that she might one day take off her blindfold and see. And, as fools are impatient, they anticipated her. But when they saw her eyes they were terrified and pricked them out. They are poor fools.’

‘So what do you ask of me?’ I enquired of the just man.

‘That you should be just towards this country,’ he replied. ‘That’s why I’ve come to you.’

‘I bow before your sense of justice,’ said I, ‘but I cannot myself be just. I am a man. I have fear of the Antichrist — I will try to take vengeance on him. And the Lord Himself will one day decide whether I am worthy of salvation.

‘I respect the just man. But I am not great enough to understand him. I am only an ordinary man. I fear evil. And I hate it.’

At this, the man who thought he was righteous left me, and clearly he resented me.

And when I asked myself why he resented me more than he did the unjust people who had driven him out and blinded Justice it awakened in me the suspicion that the Antichrist was also working within and gnawing at the supposedly righteous man.

I confess that since this meeting I fear even righteous men, those who are too just, those who want to understand everything and those who say they can forgive everything.

There certainly exist men of that sort. But people who can both hate and love and who hate hatred and love love — these are men of my kind.

For I fear that the Antichrist hides himself even behind the man who is all too just, whose righteousness is false.

There next came to me a man who called himself unjust. He spoke to me with pride and said: ‘I am but one of the many millions of unrighteous men; an anonymous unrighteous man, but of that I am also proud. Soon, I will be even less of a name than I am today, for the number of the unrighteous grows with every hour, and soon there will be countless billions, like ants.

‘I, too, come from the country of the Master of a Thousand Tongues, in whose service you once were.

‘I come because I saw that you were visited by my enemy, our enemy, the righteous man. What he told you was lies and falsehoods. I come to tell you the truth.’

I replied: ‘Since you yourself say that you are unrighteous, how then can you accuse a righteous man of doing unrighteous things?’

The unrighteous man said: ‘A change has recently come to the world. It is now such that the unrighteous are right and the righteous are wrong. I therefore wish to inform you that you are unjust when you say that the righteous man is right.

‘For you must remember that there are only thirty-six righteous men in the whole world but millions of unrighteous — and soon there will be billions. How can thirty-six poor individuals continue to be right against billions? Would it be just if thirty-six men were able to continue in the right against billions?’

‘Right is right,’ I retorted, ‘and wrong is wrong, and numbers have got nothing to do with it.’

‘How has right ever prevailed except by force of numbers?’ asked the unrighteous man. ‘Many thousands of people one day acknowledged that this was right and that was wrong, and ever since that day there has been such a distinction.’

‘No,’ said I. ‘It is always individuals who have handed down laws and proclaimed what is right — Lycurgus, for example, and Moses and Muhammad and Jesus Christ. For right is divine, and God chooses not a thousand spokesmen at the same time but only one, and it is by this that we recognize that right and justice are divine. For example, as is customary, numbers decide the election of a beauty queen but not who is the goddess of justice. There may be some who say that the queen of beauty isn’t beautiful enough. For the choice was decided by numbers. And whenever numbers alone decide something, there are always some, more or less numerous, who have a different opinion. But, when God decides, there can be no disagreement. Beauty is a matter of taste, but justice isn’t. When, however, justice is decided by numbers it is injustice.’