That is a very ingenuous conception.

You flattered yourself that at one stroke you were establishing justice in your own country and in the universe.

You were a brave man, an honest idealist, though without much experimental philosophy.

But go home to your own heart and you will recognise that you had in you a spice of malice and that our ingenuousness was not without cunning.

You believed you were performing a fine moral action.
You said to yourself: 'Here am I, just and courageous once for all.
I can henceforth repose in the public esteem and the praise of historians.' And now that you have lost your illusions, now that you know how hard it is to redress wrongs, and that the task must ever be begun afresh, you are going back to your asteroids.