d have inaugurated a despotism worthy of Dahomey, a tribunal
like that of the Inquisition, and raised human hecatombs like those of
ancient Mexico;

* that amidst their prisons and scaffolds they should persist in
believing in the righteousness of their cause, in their own humanity, in
their virtue, and, on their fall, have regarded themselves as martyrs--

is certainly strange. Such intellectual aberration, such excessive
conceit are rarely encountered, and a concurrence of circumstances, the
like of which has never been seen in the world but once, was necessary
to produce it.[1108]

Extravagant conceit and dogmatism, however, are not rare in the
human species. These two roots of the Jacobin intellect exist in all
countries, underground and indestructible. Everywhere they are kept
from sprouting by the established order of things; everywhere are they
striving to overturn old historic foundations, which press them down.
Now, as in the past, students live in garrets, bohemians in lodgings,
physicians without patients and lawyers without clients in lonely
offices, so many Brissots, Dantons, Marats, Robespierres, and St.
Justs in embryo; only, for lack of air and sunshine, they never come
to maturity. At twenty, on entering society, a young man's judgment
and pride are extremely sensitive.--Firstly, let his society be what it
will, it is for him a scandal to pure reason: for it was not organized
by a legislative philosopher in accordance with a sound principle, but
is the work of one generation after another, according to manifold and
changing necessities. It is not a product of logic, but of history, and
the new-fledged thinker shrugs his shoulders as he looks up and sees
what the ancient tenement is, the foundations of which are arbitrary,
its architecture confused, and its many repairs plainly visible.--In
the second place, whatever degree of perfection preceding institutions,
laws, and customs have reached, these have not received his approval;
others, his predecessors, have chosen for him, he is being subjected
beforehand to moral, political, and social forms which pleased them.
Whether they please him or not is of no consequence. Like a horse
trotting along between the poles of a wagon in the harness that happens
to have been put on his back, he has to make best of it.--Besides,
whatever its organization, as it is essentially a hierarchy, he is
nearly always subaltern in it, and must ever remain so, either soldier,