mitting a crime. Thus construed, the theory divides Frenchmen into
two groups: one consisting of aristocrats, fanatics, egoists, the
corrupt, bad citizens in short, and the other patriots, philosophers,
and the virtuous, that is to say, those belonging to the sect.[1128]
Thanks to this reduction, the vast moral and social world with which
they deal finds its definition, expression, and representation in a
ready-made antithesis. The aim of the government is now clear: the
wicked must submit to the good, or, which is briefer, the wicked must be
suppressed. To this end let us employ confiscation, imprisonment, exile,
drowning and the guillotine and a large scale. All means are justifiable
and meritorious against these traitors; now that the Jacobin has
canonized his slaughter, he slays through philanthropy.--Thus is the
forming of his personality completed like that of a theologian who
becomes inquisitor. Extraordinary contrasts are gathered to construct
it:--a lunatic that is logical, and a monster that pretends to have
a conscience. Under the pressure of his faith and egotism, he has
developed two deformities, one of the head and the other of the heart;
his common sense is gone, and his moral sense is utterly perverted. In
fixing his mind on abstract formulas, he is no longer able to see men
as they are. His self-admiration makes him consider his adversaries, and
even his rivals, as miscreants deserving of death. On this downhill road
nothing stops him, for, in qualifying things inversely to their true
meaning, he has violated within himself the precious concepts which
brings us back to truth and justice. No light reaches eyes which regard
blindness as clear-sightedness; no remorse affects a soul which erects
barbarism into patriotism, and which sanctions murder with duty.

*****

[Footnote 1101: Cf. "The Ancient Regime," p. 242. Citations from the
"Contrat Social."--Buchez et Roux, "Histoire Parlementaire," XXVI. 96.
Declaration of rights read by Robespierre in the Jacobin club, April 21,
1793, and adopted by the club as its own. "The people is sovereign, the
government is its work and its property, and public functionaries are
its clerks. The people can displace its mandatories and change its
government when it pleases."]

[Footnote 1102: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other dictators that
like that also organized elections and saw themselves as being the
people, speaking and acting on their behalf and therefor