If you were punished for it, what was the nature of thosewho punished you? Yours was the code of life. What, then, is theirs? Whatstandard of value lies at its root? What is its ultimate purpose? Do you thinkthat what you’re facing is merely a conspiracy to seize your wealth? You,who know the source of wealth, should know it’s much more and muchworse than that. Did you ask me to name man’s motive power? Man’smotive power is his moral code. Ask yourself where their code is leadingyou and what it offers you as your final goal. A viler evil than to murder aman, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw aman into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will,and that he build the furnace, besides. By their own statement, it is they whoneed you and have nothing to offer you in return. By their own statement,you must support them because they cannot survive without you. Considerthe obscenity of offering their impotence and their need—their need ofyou—as a justification for your torture. Are you willing to accept it? Do youcare to purchase—at the price of your great endurance, at the price of youragony—the satisfaction of the needs of your own destroyers? ...“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if yousaw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, hisarms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of hisstrength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon hisshoulders—what would you tell him to do?”
