Against the Robots

P 210. – Alas! my friends, the supernatural life, the life of souls, of poor souls, is not without much filth either… There is vice, there is sin. If God were to open our senses to the invisible world, to the very aspect… to the very aspect of the hideous… the abominable proliferations of evil?

P 211. And the parish is a small church. But if the last parish were to die by some impossible chance, there would be no more church, neither large nor small, no more redemption, nothing – Satan would have visited his people.

– There are still many parishes in the world. But this one is dead. Perhaps it has been dead for a long time?

P 213. And now, Evil no longer keeps you warm, continued the priest of Fenouille. […] You feel completely numb, completely cold. People always talk about the fires of Hell, but no one has seen them, my friends. Hell is the cold.

P 218. Hatred of the priest is one of humanity's deepest feelings, and also one of its least understood. That it is as old as humankind itself, no one doubts, but our age has raised it to an almost prodigious degree of refinement and excellence. This is because the decline or disappearance of other powers has made the priest, though seemingly so closely intertwined with social life, a more singular, more unclassifiable being than any of the magical elders whom the ancient world kept confined deep within temples, or sacred animals, in the sole intimacy of the gods.

P 237. This village, and many villages like it, continued the priest of Fenouille, still calm, all these villages formerly Christian, when they begin to burn – yes you will see all sorts of beasts come out of them whose name men have long since forgotten, assuming that they were ever given one.

P 239. Yes, sir, the hour is coming (perhaps it has already come?) when the desire we think we have walled up deep in our conscience, and which has lost even its name there, will burst forth from its sepulcher. And, if every other exit is closed to it, it will find one in flesh and blood—yes, sir—you will see it appear in unexpected and, I dare say, hideous, horrible forms. It will poison minds, it will pervert instincts, and… who knows? Why shouldn't the body, our wretched, defenseless body, once again pay the ransom of the… of the other? A new ransom?

P 240. Yes, sir, you are free to establish an order from which God is excluded, but in doing so you have broken the covenant. Oh! No doubt the ancient alliance will not be broken in a day; the Church is bound to society, even in its fallen state, by too many ties! The time will come, however, when, in a world organized for despair, preaching hope will be nothing more than throwing a burning coal into a powder keg.