of this style. For many years
the government speaks to the people as it would to one of Gessner's
shepherds. The peasants are entreated not to burn castles because it is
painful for their good king to see such sights. They are exhorted "to
surprise him with their virtues in order that he may be the sooner
rewarded for his own."[3412] At the height of the Jacquerie tumults the
sages of the day seem to think they are living in a state of pastoral
simplicity, and that with an air on the flute they may restore to its
fold the howling pack of bestial animosities and unchained appetites.

III. Our True Human Nature.

The inadequacy and fragility of reason in man.--The rarity
and inadequacy of reason in humanity.--Subordination of
reason in human conduct.--Brutal and dangerous forces.--The
nature and utility of government. Government impossible
under the new theory.

It is a sad thing to fall asleep in a sheep-shed and, on awakening,
to find the sheep transformed into wolves; and yet, in the event of a
revolution that is what we may expect. What we call reason in Man is not
an innate endowment, basic and enduring, but a tardy acquisition and a
fragile composition. The slightest physiological knowledge will tell us
that it is a precarious act of balance, dependent on the no less greater
instability of the brain, nerves, circulation and digestion. Take women
that are hungry and men that have been drinking; place a thousand of
these together, and let them excite each other with their cries, their
anxieties, and the contagious reaction of their ever-deepening emotions;
it will not be long before you find them a crowd of dangerous maniacs.
This becomes evident, and abundantly so, after 1789.--Now, consult
psychology. The simplest mental operation, a sensuous perception, is an
act of memory, the appliance of a name, an ordinary act of judgment is
the play of complicated mechanism, the joint and final result of several
millions of wheels which, like those of a clock,[3413] turn and propel
blindly, each for itself, each through its own force, and each kept
in place and in functional activity by a system of balance and
compensation.[3414] If the hands mark the hour with any degree of
accuracy it is due to a wonderful if not miraculous conjunction, while
hallucination, delirium and monomania, ever at the door, are always
ready to enter it. Properly speaking Man is mad, as the body is sick, by
nature; th