Prev | Current Page 1020 | Next

Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

It
constitutes the brightest of social sentiments; it may be said that
this is the soul of which the State is the body. - Now, in the
Jacobin State, this soul has perished; it has not died out through
unforeseen accidents, but through a forced result of the system,
through a practical effect of the speculative theory, which,
converting each man into an absolute sovereign, sets every man warring
against other men, and which, under the pretence of regenerating the
human species, lets loose, authorizes and consecrates the worst
instincts of human nature, all the lusts of license, tyranny and
domination. - In the name of a non-existent ideal people whom it
declares sovereign, the Jacobins have violently usurped all public
powers, brutally abolished all private rights, regarding the actual
living people as a beast of burden, and yet worse, as a robot,
subjecting their human machine to the cruelest restraints in order to
mechanically maintain it in the unnatural, rigid posture, which,
according to principles, they inflict upon it. Thenceforth, all ties
are sundered between them and the nation; to prey upon, bleed and
starve this nation, to re-conquer it after it bad escaped them, to
repeatedly enchain and gag it - all this they could well do; but to
reconcile it to their government, never! - Between them, and for the
same reason, through another consequence of the same theory, and
another effect of the same lusts, no bond between them would hold.


Pages:
1008 1009 1010 1011 1012 1013 1014 1015 1016 1017 1018 1019 1020 1021 1022 1023 1024 1025 1026 1027 1028 1029 1030 1031 1032