1 But the flames rose and we could not guess the word.
2 And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
3 I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being.
4 But sometimes, and it is rare, sometimes, somewhere, one among men find that word.
5 And a word steals into our mind, as we look upon our brothers, and that word is fear.
6 For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought.
7 We cannot know what word we are to give, nor what great deed this earth expects to witness.
8 There is some word, one single word which is not in the language of men, but which had been.
9 I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.
10 And when I understood this word, the book fell from my hands, and I wept, I who had never known tears.
11 And it seemed as if these eyes were begging us to gather that word and not to let it go from us and from the earth.
12 And it seemed as if these eyes were trying to tell us something through the flames, to send into our eyes some word without sound.
13 We stopped and we saw that their eyes, so hard and scornful to the world, were looking at us as if they would obey any word we might speak.
14 It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.
15 This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.
16 The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it.
17 The Saint of the pyre had seen the future when he chose me as his heir, as the heir of all the saints and all the martyrs who came before him and who died for the same cause, for the same word, no matter what name they gave to their cause and their truth.
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