d all the experiences of the world
are ignored.

This shows the folly of projecting any abstract theory, however true, to
its remote and logical sequence. In the attempt we are almost certain to
be landed in absurdity, so complicated are the relations of life,
especially in governmental and political science. What doctrine of civil
or political economy would be applicable in all ages and all countries
and all conditions? Like the ascertained laws of science, or the great
and accepted truths of the Bible, political axioms are to be considered
in their relation with other truths equally accepted, or men are soon
brought into a labyrinth of difficulties, and the strongest intellect is
perplexed.

And especially will this be the case when a theory under consideration
is not a truth but an assumption. That was the trouble with Rousseau.
His theories, disdainful of experience, however logically treated,
became in their remotest sequence and application insulting to the human
understanding, because they were often not only assumptions, but
assumptions of what was not true, although very specious and flattering
to certain classes.

Rousseau confounded the great truth of the justice of moral and
political equality with the absurd and unnatural demand for social and
material equality. The great modern cry for equal opportunity for all is
sound and Christian; but any attempt to guarantee individual success in
using opportunity, to insure the lame and the lazy an equal rank in the
race, must end in confusion and distraction.

The evil of Rousseau's crude theories or false assumptions was
practically seen in the acceptance of their logical conclusions, which
led to anarchy, murder, pillage, and outrageous excess. The great danger
attending his theories is that they are generally half-truths,--truth
and falsehood blended. His writings are sophistical. It is difficult to
separate the truth from the error, by reason of the marvellous felicity
of his language. I do not underrate his genius or his style. He was
doubtless an original thinker and a most brilliant and artistic writer;
and by so much did he confuse people, even by the speciousness of his
logic. There is nothing indefinite in what he advances. He is not a poet
dealing in mysticisms, but a rhetorical philosopher, propounding
startling theories, partly true and partly false, which he logically
enforces with matchless eloquence.

Probably the most influential of Rousseau's