m.' Of this quality Condorcet
had nothing. His personal presence inspired a decent respect, but no
strong emotion either of fear or admiration or physical sympathy. His
voice was feeble, his utterance indistinct; and he never got over that
nervous apprehension which the spectacle of large and turbulent crowds
naturally rouses in the student. In a revolution after the manner of
Lord Somers he would have been invaluable. He thoroughly understood his
own principles, and he was a master of the art, so useful in its place
and time and so respectable in all places and times, of considering
political projects point by point with reference to a definite framework
of rational ideas. But this was no time for such an art; this was not a
revolution to be guided by reason, not even reason like Condorcet's,
streaked with jacobinical fibre. The national ideas in which it had
arisen had transformed themselves into tumultuous passion, and from this
into frenzied action.

Every politician of real eminence as a reformer possesses one of three
elements. One class of men is inspired by an intellectual attachment to
certain ideas of justice and right reason: another is moved by a deep
pity for the hard lot of the mass of every society: while the third,
such men as Richelieu for example, have an instinctive appreciation and
passion for wise and orderly government. The great and typical ruler is
moved in varying degrees by all three in modern times, when the claims
of the poor, the rank and file of the social army, have been raised to
the permanent place that belongs to them. Each of the three types has
its own peculiar conditions of success, and there are circumstances in
which some one of the three is more able to grapple with the obstacles
to order than either of the other two. It soon became very clear that
the intellectual quality was not the element likely to quell the tempest
that had arisen now.

Let it be said, however, that Condorcet showed himself no pedantic nor
fastidious trifler with the tremendous movement which he had contributed
to set afoot. The same practical spirit which drove him into the strife,
guided him in the midst of it. He never wrung his hands, nor wept, nor
bewailed the unreason of the multitudes to whom in vain he preached
reason. Unlike the typical man of letters--for he was without vanity--he
did not abandon the cause of the Revolution because his suggestions were
often repulsed. 'It would be better,' he said