From SELECTED WORKS, by V. I. Lenin

Picture to yourself a man ascending a very high, steep and
hitherto unexplored mountain. Let us assume that after overcoming
unprecedented difficulties and dangers, he has succeeded in rising
higher than any of his predecessors, but that he has not yet reached
the summit. He is in the position where it is not only difficult and
dangerous to proceed in the direction and along the path he selected,
but positively impossible. He has to turn back, descend, seek another
path, longer, perhaps, but one which will enable him to reach the
summit. The descent from this height, unreached by any one before,
proves to be more dangerous and difficult for our imaginary traveller
than the ascent: It is easier to slip, it is not so easy to choose the
spot on which to get a footing; there is not that elevation of spirit
that one feels in going upwards, straight to the goal, etc. One has to
tie a rope round oneself, spend hours with a mountaineer's pick in
cutting footholds, or a projection, to which the rope could be tied
tightly; one has to move at a tortoise pace, and move downwards,
descend, away from the goal; and still one does not know whether
this extremely dangerous and painful descent is coming to an end,
or whether a fairly safe detour can be made by which one can ascend
more boldly, more quickly and more directly to the summit.

It would be almost unnatural to suppose that, notwithstanding the
fact that he had risen to such an unprecedented height, a man who
finds himself in such a position does not feel moments of despon-
dency. And in all probability these moments would be more numer-
ous, frequent and harder to bear if he could hear the voices from
below of those who, through a telescope, and from a safe distance,
are watching this dangerous descent, which cannot even be called
what the '"Smenovekh-ists" call "descending with the brakes on"; for
brakes presuppose a well-planned road, one that had already been
traversed by some vehicle, a road prepared beforehand, already tested
by some mechanism. In this case, however, there is no vehicle, no
road, absolutely nothing that had been tested before.

The voices from below are gloating voices. They gloat openly,

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