-confidence in every direction--in style, in content, and in lack
of accuracy. "Illustrious Raynal," writes the author, "the question I
am about to discuss is worthy of your steel, but without assuming to
be metal of the same temper, I have taken courage, saying to myself
with Correggio, I, too, am a painter." Thereupon follows a long
encomium upon Paoli, whose principal merit is explained to have been
that he strove in his legislation to keep for every man a property
sufficient with moderate exertion on his own part for the sustenance
of life. Happiness consists in living conformably to the constitution
of our organization. Wealth is a misfortune, primogeniture a relic of
barbarism, celibacy a reprehensible practice. Our animal nature
demands food, shelter, clothing, and the companionship of woman. These
are the essentials of happiness; but for its perfection we require
both reason and sentiment. These theses are the tolerable portions,
being discussed with some coherence. But much of the essay is mere
meaningless rhetoric and bombast, which sounds like the effusion of a
boyish rhapsodist. "At the sound of your [reason's] voice let the
enemies of nature be still, and swallow their serpents' tongues in
rage." "The eyes of reason restrain mankind from the precipice of the
passions, as her decrees modify likewise the feeling of their rights."
Many other passages of equal absurdity could be quoted, full of
far-fetched metaphor, abounding in strange terms, straining rhetorical
figures to distortion.[22] And yet in spite of the bombast, certain
essential Napoleonic ideas appear in the paper much as they endured to
the end, namely, those on heredity, on the equal division of property,
and on the nature of civil society. And there is one prophetic
sentence which deserves to be quoted. "A disordered imagination! there
lies the cause and source of human misfortune. It sends us wandering
from sea to sea, from fancy to fancy, and when at last it grows calm,
opportunity has passed, the hour strikes, and its possessor dies
abhorring life." In later days the author threw what he probably
supposed was the only existing manuscript of this vaporing effusion
into the fire. But a copy of it had been made at Lyons, perhaps
because one of the judges thought, as he said, that it "might have
been written by a man otherwise gifted with common sense." Another has
been found among the papers confided by Napoleon to Fesch. The proofs
of authentici