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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

Note on the results of the revolutionary government
without either date or signature.) "The law of Frimaire 14 created two
centers of influence from which action spread, in the sense of the
Committee, and which affected the authorities. These two pivots of
revolutionary rule outside the Committee were the representatives of
the people on missions and the national agents controlling the
district committees. The word revolutionary government alone
exercised an incalculable magical influence." - Mallet-Dupan,
"M?moires," II., p. 2, and following pages.

BOOK SECOND. THE JACOBIN PROGRAM.
CHAPTER I.
I. The Doctrine.
Program of the Jacobin party. -- Abstract principle and spontaneous
development of the theory.
Nothing is more dangerous than a general idea in narrow and empty
minds: as they are empty, it finds no knowledge there to interfere
with it; as they are narrow it is not long before it occupies the
place entirely. Henceforth they no longer belong to themselves but
are mastered by it; it works in them and through them, the man, in the
true sense of the word, being possessed. Something which is not
himself, a monstrous parasite, a foreign and disproportionate
conception, lives within him, developing and giving birth to the evil
purposes with which it is pregnant.


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