We observe in man's beginning the beginning of his hurt; the root of the error is in inheritance.
Injustice, artificial and groundless authority, royalty without reason, the fantastic freaks of fortune which suddenly put crowns on heads! It is there, as far as the monstrous authority of the dead, that we must draw a straight line and clean the darkness away.
The transfer of the riches and authority of the dead, of whatever kind, to their descendants, is not in accord with reason and the moral law.
The laws of might and of possessions are for the living alone.

Every man must occupy in the common lot a place which he owes to his work and not to luck.
It is tradition! But that is no reason, on the other hand.

Tradition, which is the artificial welding of the present with the mass of the past, contrives a chain between them, where there is none.

It is from tradition that all human unhappiness comes; it piles _de facto_, truths on to the true truth; it overrides justice; it takes all freedom away from reason and replaces it with legendary things, forbidding reason to look for what may be inside them.
It is in the one domain of science and its application, and sometimes in the technique of the arts, that experience legitimately takes the power of law, and that acquired productions have a right to accumulate.
But to pass from this treasuring of truth to the dynastic privilege of ideas or powers or wealth--those talismans--that is to make a senseless assimilation which kills equality in the bud and prevents human order from having a basis.

Inheritance, which is the concrete and palpable form of tradition, defends itself by the tradition of origins and of beliefs--abuses defended by abuses, to infinity--and it is by reason of that integral succession that here, on earth, we see a few men holding the multitude of men in their hands.
I say all this to Marie.