It is impossible to glance through any newspaper at all, no matter of
what day, what month, what year, without finding in every line the most
frightful signs of human perversity, together with the most astonishing
boasts of probity, of goodness, of charity, and the most shameless
affirmations in regard to the progress of civilization.
Every paper, from the first line to the last, is but a tissue of
horrors. War, crime, theft, lewdness, crimes of princes, crimes of
nations, crimes of individuals, a universal intoxication of atrocity.
And it is with this disgusting appetizer that civilized man accompanies
his every morning meal. Everything in this world sweats crime: the
magazine, the wall, the face of man. I cannot see how a pure hand can
touch a paper without a convulsion of disgust.