December 7, 1945prev home next
Jesus says:
“ ‘This language is too hard! He wants to make us victims of his madness!’ men still say when I exhort them to live justly and instruct them on how Religion should be understood and practiced to make it a way of life yielding Eternal Life. And they do not realize that in so saying they confess to being degraded below their condition as men.
“They speak of evolution, of a superman. Well then, let us consider man as I found him, brought to this point after his descent from Paradise. Draw the diagram as I guide your hand,119 and, when the diagram is finished, you will see that there is not an advance, but a decline. Evolution? When today’s proud and false philosophers speak of evolution, they presuppose the concept of ‘ascent.’ But to evolve means to proceed from one point to another. And then one can proceed by spirals either upwards or downwards. Can’t you make a spiral? Make a parabola.
“Do you see? If he had moved on the right side, he would have evolved towards Heaven. He wanted the left side. That’s the current ‘superman,’ today’s ‘evolved’ one! Who thinks it is madness to live at least as a ‘man’ if he is unable to become an ‘angel.’ And he calls himself a ‘Victim’ because I exhort him to live as a man. And He calls me ‘mad.’ Yes, quite mad! Because of love!”
“Love Me. Love Me, little John...”120
[original diagram omitted]
119 The writer here adds in parentheses, “I turn the page, because the diagram is not there,” and on the next two pages of the notebook the drawing is made.
120 We pass over 110 handwritten pages containing eight episodes from The Third Year of the Public (December 9-17, 1945).