num_pages: 287
description: Excerpt from Lessons of the French Revolution 1789-1872It is lowering to the pride of human reason that such a profession of principles should be really descriptive of the opinions and purposes of large and in?uential classes of the French nation. It is melancholy to know that they should be maintained not merely by small sects like the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century or the Mormons of Utah but by powerful bodies of the leading nation of Conti neutal Europe Those who enter the lists in Opposition to the champions of these theories will find that they have to deal with antagonists not only inspired with a wild enthusiasm but gifted with great ingenuity and ability enlisted in defence of these extravagant doctrines When once men desert the guide of experience when they cease to consider human society as built upon the certain principles existing in human nature itself and when they suppose that they can reconstruct the world in accordance with their own views there is no prac tical absurdity which their lively imaginations will not coin sophistries to defend. Experience never teaches them the ruin of a thousand abortive schemes only stimulates them to construct the thousand and first and they are ever ready to stake the very exist ence of society on the success of the last new scheme....
language: English
title: Lessons of the French Revolution, 1789-1872
publisher: Forgotten Books