To read all and vote in every case, would be "a
physical impossibility."[42] - Finally, as things are, "is not the
general will, at least the apparent general will, that alone on which
the government can decide, itself ultra-revolutionary?"[43] In other
words, should not the five or six rascals in a State who vociferate,
be listened to, rather than a hundred honest folks who keep their
mouths shut? With this sophism, gross as it is, but of pure Jacobin
manufacture, Carnot ends by hoodwinking his honor and his conscience;
otherwise intact, and far more so than his colleagues, he likewise
undergoes moral and mental mutilation; constrained by the duties of
his post and the illusions of his creed, he succeeded in an inward
decapitation of the two noblest of human faculties, common-sense, the
most useful, and the moral sense, the most exalted of all.
IV. The Statesmen.
Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, Couthon and Saint-
Just. - Conditions of this rule. - Dangers to which they are
subject. - Their dissensions. - Pressure of Fear and Theory.
If such are the ravages which are made in an upright, firm and healthy
personality, what must be the havoc in corrupt or weak natures, in
which bad instincts already predominate! - And note that they are
without the protection provided by a pursuit of some specific and
useful objective.
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