There is no reason to be saddened by the idea that the innumerable ugliness that we see spreading everywhere, on every continent, will one day be definitively swept away along with those who have produced them, encouraged or tolerated them, and who continue to produce new ones. There is no need to be saddened by the fear that the old and beautiful human creations—the Pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon, the temples of South India, Ellora, Angkor, Chartres Cathedral—may well be swept away along with them, in the colossal fury of the End. The ugliness that man has accumulated, the desecrations of the Earth of which even the best races have been guilty in this century of universal decay, neutralise by far all that the genius of the Ancients has produced that is greatest and most beautiful. They make us forget the winged bulls of Babylon and Assyria, the friezes of the Greek temples and the Byzantine mosaics, and tip the scales in favour of the disappearance of the human species.
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