As in the Roman empire in the fourth
century, in Italy in the seventeenth century, in the Turkish provinces
in our own day, naught remains but an ill-conducted herd of stunted,
torpid creatures, limited to their daily wants and animal instincts,
indifferent to the public welfare and to their own prospective
interests, so degenerate as to have lost sight of their own
discoveries, unlearned their own sciences, arts and industries, and,
in short, and worse than all, base, false, corrupted souls entirely
wanting in honor and conscience. Nothing is more destructive than the
unrestricted meddling of the State, even when wise and paternal; in
Paraguay, under the discipline of Jesuits, so minute in its details,
"Indian physiognomy appeared like that of animals taken in a trap."
They worked, ate, drank and gave birth by sound of bells, under watch
and ward, correctly and mechanically, but showing no liking for
anything, not even for their own existence, being transformed into so
may automatons; at least it may be said is that the means employed to
produce this result were gentle and that they, before their
transformation were mere brutes. But those who the revolutionary-
Jesuit now undertakes to transform into robots, and by harsh means,
are human beings.
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