[…] Before proceeding to study the various human hypocrisies, the various disguises of King Tartuffe,1 I must justify the name with which I have baptized our century – lest I otherwise be accused of slander.
And why should one want to accuse our century of hypocrisy, when you will tell me that hypocrisy was born with the first man and woman? In every age mankind has had the same vices and virtues: at most, the vices and virtues change name and garb; but the nature of good and evil always remains the same. […] […]
Now, the nineteenth century (may it take no offence) is critical, it is industrial, it is positive, it is sceptical,2 it is many other things, fair and foul; but before and above all else, it is hypocritical.
It is hypocritical, because it is a period of transition, a passage between a past of assorted violence and ignorance that is not entirely buried, and a just and scientific future glimmering with the rosy twilight of the dawn. […] […]
Our society is so old that it stinks; and the odour of its putrefaction rises to the nostrils of even the least finical, despite the many disinfectants and perfumes used to combat the deep dissolution of what is no longer alive. Corpses, for better or worse, can be embalmed, but not laws or social statutes, which, being living things, must follow the fateful law of life’s evolution.
We have promised liberty to all the redeemed of 1789; but what use is liberty when most people are shackled at the wrists, shackled by ignorance and paralysed by hunger?
We have promised the oppressed equal justice for all; but who can afford justice when it costs so much time and money?
We have promised fraternity to all; but I see only brothers who rob one another, who dispute the free defence of strikes, who dare not apply to all industry the sovereign justice of sharecropping,3 which, in so many provinces of Italy, is already applied to working of the soil.
Our laws are less unjust than they once were, they are progressive, they are full of good and sacred intentions; yet how many impostures, how many lies are not hidden still among the deep folds of our codes and regulations!
For some time all our legislators’ efforts have been reduced to propping up an edifice that is crumbling on every side, worm-eaten by a deep rot beneath all the varnish and the gilding. Modern society is founded on a base of many large lies, of which it no longer believes a single one.
Let us desist for once from the propping, and descend into the dungeons, the underground, to test with touch the solidity of the foundations, bravely striking at them with the hammer of humanity.
Nothing lasts except the true, and we are false; no feeling endures but true feeling, and we are Tartuffes of feeling, as we are Tartuffes of thought. […]