The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-10-18
PASSIONS AND IDEAS.

Men who are prone to abstract reflection
are very apt to regard the solution of politi-
cal and sociological questions as depending
merely on the results of conflicting ideas.
Revolution, they are often heard to assume. is
simply the violent preponderance of one set
of antaponistic ideas over another set, and,
on the other hand stability is the product of
a movable equilibrium of antagonistic ideas,
in which progress takes place by regular
and peaceful alienation of action and reaction.
There is fatal flaw in this method of ac-
counting for war or peace, for stability or in
stability. 1t ignores the paramount Office
and the terrible play of the passions. Alb
stract ideas from passions, if you can,
and what do they become? Are they
capable of such conflicts as may con-
vulse society and subvert government? What
warrlid an idea ever producer What bloody
conquest did an idea ever achieve? The
truth is that there is no more warlike power
or propensity in those ideas. regarded strictly
as ideas, which are frequently spoken of as
agitating society and contending for political
ascendancy, than there is in the axioms and
propositions of Euclid. There can De no
more antagonism between them than there is
between comic section and right angled
triangle. Nor would men, viewing them from
the standpoint of pure intellection, expert
ence any more impulse to fight about them,
than to fight about multiplication and sddi-
ton, or to cut each others throats in a con-
test to destroy vulgar fractions with decimals,
or uice rersa.
But it may be said that mem have unavoid-
able differences of opinion, which they may
believe to be founded in dispassionate reason.
Indeed, William Goodwin once wrote an elab-
crate essay to prove that men-even the
greatest criminals always act with the belief
that their action is reasonable. While such
theory cancels moral criminality and de-
thrones conscience, it utterly fails to account
for those thousands and thousands of cases
of human inconsistency so glaring and SO
impressive as to make it as familiar as a
proverb, and much truer than the bulk of
proyerbial philosophy, that men are nearly
always worse or better than their creeds.
In politics. then, ideas, at the most, play
symbolic part, while passions organize their
opposing forces, and lead them to the conflict
But it frequently happens that those who con-
tend with the utmost frenzy for the overthrow
of certain institutions and the establishment
of others, are cooly agreed with their foes on
the abstract principles upon which govern
ment ought to be organized and conducted. A
signal instance of such coincidence of ideas
amidst conflicting passions was witnessed in
the late inter-seCtional war. Leaders on both
sides were found uniting in the belief that
the federal constitution was an admirable
work of political wisdom which had given to
the world an example of "the best govern
ment on the face of the earth" And
yet, at that moment, this government, SO |
beautiful in the abstract, was visibly and |
failing to secure the peace, the |
Union and the liberty which were the objects |
of its formation. Moreover, the victorious
section has been intent on eliminating all |
those constitutional principles which gave to
The federal organization its ideal beauty, and
IS now, apparently, on the eve of erecting
one of the most monstrous and hideous des-
potisms which the world ever saw. In short,
he passions which brought about the war are
still at work, and we cannot look for better
political conditions until those passions have
he'd out and are succeeded by others less
nalign in their nature and more wholesome
n their tendency.