e way.--
Perfection of this character.--Common sense and moral sense
both perverted.

When an ideology attracts people, it is less due to its sophistication
than to the promises it holds out. It appeals more to their desires than
to their intelligence; for, if the heart sometimes may be the dupe of
the head, the latter is much more frequently the dupe of the former. We
do not accept a system because we deem it a true one, but because the
truth we find in it suits us. Political or religious fanaticism, any
theological or philosophical channel in which truth flows, always
has its source in some ardent longing, some secret passion, some
accumulation of intense, painful desire to which a theory affords
and outlet. In the Jacobin, as well as in the Puritan, there is a
fountain-head of this description. What feeds this source with the
Puritan is the anxieties of a disturbed conscience which, forming for
itself some idea of perfect justice, becomes rigid and multiplies the
commandments it believes that God has promulgated; on being constrained
to disobey these it rebels, and, to impose them on others, it becomes
tyrannical even to despotism. The first effort of the Puritan, however,
wholly internal, is self-control; before becoming political he becomes
moral. With the Jacobin, on the contrary, the first precept is not
moral, political; it is not his duties which he exaggerates but his
rights, while his doctrine, instead of being a prick to his conscience,
flatters his pride.[1121] However vast and insatiate human pride may
be, now it is satisfied, for never before has it had so much to feed
upon.--In the program of the sect, do not look for the restricted
prerogatives growing out of self-respect which the proud-spirited man
claims for himself, such as civil rights accompanied by those liberties
that serve as sentinels and guardians of these rights--security for
life and property, the stability of the law, the integrity of courts,
equality of citizens before the law and under taxation, the abolition
of privileges and arbitrary proceedings, the election of representatives
and the administration of public funds. Summing it up, the precious
guarantees which render each citizen an inviolable sovereign on his
limited domain, which protect his person and property against all
species of public or private oppression and exaction, which maintain him
calm and erect before competitors as well as adversaries, upright and
respect