The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte
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Название: The French Revolution (Vol.1-3)

Автор: Taine Hippolyte

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Документальная литература

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isbn: 4064066060053

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СКАЧАТЬ it was fashioned in this or that way according to the materials on hand; a beginning was made by examining these materials, and trying to estimate their rigidity, weight, and strength.—All this is reactionary; the age of Reason has come and the Assembly is too enlightened to drag on in a rut. In conformity with the fashion of the time it works by deduction, after the method of Rousseau, according to an abstract notion of right, of the State and of the social compact.2126 According to this process, by virtue of political geometry alone, they shall have the perfect vessel and since it perfect it follows that it will sail, and that much better than any empirical craft.—They legislate according to this principle, and one may imagine the nature of their discussions. There are no convincing facts, no pointed arguments; nobody would ever imagine that the speakers were gathered together to conduct real business. Through speech after speech, strings of hollow abstractions are endlessly renewed as in a meeting of students in rhetoric for the purpose of practice, or in a society of old bookworms for their own amusement. On the question of the veto "each orator in turn, armed with his portfolio, reads a dissertation which has no bearing whatever" on the preceding one, which makes a "sort of academical session,"2127 a succession of pamphlets fresh every morning for several days. On the question of the Rights of Man fifty-four speakers are placed on the list.

      "I remember," says Dumont, "that long discussion, which lasted for weeks, as a period of deadly boredom—vain disputes over words, a metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned into a Sorbonne lecture-room," and all this while chateaux were burning, while town-halls were being sacked, and courts dared no longer hold assize, while the distribution of wheat was stopped, and while society was in course of dissolution. In the same manner the theologians of the Easter Roman Empire kept up their wrangles about the uncreated light of Mount Tabor while Mahomet II was battering the walls of Constantinople with his cannon.—Ours, of course, are another sort of men, juvenile in feeling, sincere, enthusiastic, even generous, and further, more devoted, laborious, and in some cases endowed with rare talent. But neither zeal, nor labor, nor talent are of any use when not employed in the service of a sound idea; and if in the service of a false one, the greater they are the more mischief they do.

      "It is impossible," he says, "to depict the confusion of ideas, the license of the imagination, the burlesque of popular notions. One would think that they saw before them the world on the day after the Creation."

      They seem to think, indeed, that human society does not exist, and that they are appointed to create it. Just as well might ambassadors "of hostile tribes, and of diverse interests, set themselves to arrange their common lot as if nothing had previously existed." There is no hesitation. They are satisfied that the thing can be easily done, and that, with two or three axioms of political philosophy, the first man that comes may make himself master of it. Immoderate conceit of this kind among men of experience would seem ridiculous; in this assembly of novices it is a strength. A flock which has lost its way follows those who appears to forge ahead; they are the most irrational but they are the most confident, and in the Chamber as in the nation it is the daredevils who become leaders.

       Table of Contents

      Ascendancy of the revolutionary party—Theory in its favor—

       The constraint thus imposed on men's minds—Appeal to the

       passions—Brute force on the side of the party—It profits

       by this—Oppression СКАЧАТЬ