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Location: London

Birthdate: February 7, 1986 (26 years old)

Biography: '... So it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries. First of all what is it really all about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish government?' 'To abolish God!' said Gregory opening the eyes of a fanatic. 'We do not only want to upset a few depotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those abitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentamentalists of the French Revolution talked about the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong.' --------------------------------------------- '...We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men, my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property so they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to deny the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's.' Syme struck his hands together. 'How true that is,' he cried, 'I have felt it from my boyhood, but never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle were removed - say a wealthy uncle - he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not just trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. ... It is a chance not be missed, certainly,' assented Syme, 'but still I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that the modern world is full of lawless little men and mad little movements. But, beastly as they are, they generally have the one merit of disagreeing with each other. How can you talk of their leading one army or hurling one bolt? What is this anarchy?' 'Do not confuse it,' replied the constable, 'with those chance dynamite outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really the outbreaks of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast philosophical movement, consisting of an outer and an inner ring. You might even call the outer ring the laity and the inner ring the priesthood. I prefer to call the outer ring the innocent section, and the inner ring the supremely guilty section. The outer ring - the main mass of their supporters - are merely anarchists; that is, men who believe rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the system that has called it crime. They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe that the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a man seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless as the flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket he would naturally feel exquisitely good. These I call the innocent section.' 'Oh!' said Syme. 'Naturally, therefore, these people talk about "a happy time coming"; "the paradise of the future"; "mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue," and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak - the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths' - and the policeman lowered his voice - 'in their mouths these phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. 'They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they thow bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.' - GK Chesterton, The Man who was Thursday (1908)

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A little philosophy inclineth a man to atheism, depth in philosophy brings men's minds back to religion - Francis Bacon

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, "You are mad, you are not like us.'" - Early Christian proverb

'Oh, gentlemen, I tell you again, with a bleeding heart, I have learnt a great deal this night. I have learnt that it's not only impossible to live a scoundrel, but impossible to die a scoundrel. No, gentlemen, one must die honest.' - Mitya from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

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