extremes with enthusiasm and rigor of faith;

* that, driven by it into a narrow strait, ever getting narrower and
narrower, they should have continued to crush each other at every
step;

* that, finally, on reaching the visionary temple of their so-called
liberty, they should have found themselves in a slaughter-house, and,
within its precincts, should have become in turn butcher and brute;

* that, through their maxims of a universal and perfect liberty they
should have inaugurated a despotism worthy of Dahomey, a tribunal like
that of the Inquisition, and raised human hecatombs like those of
ancient Mexico;

* that amidst their prisons and scaffolds they should persist in
believing in the righteousness of their cause, in their own humanity,
in their virtue, and, on their fall, have regarded themselves as
martyrs -

is certainly strange. Such intellectual aberration, such excessive
conceit are rarely encountered, and a concurrence of circumstances,
the like of which has never been seen in the world but once, was
necessary to produce it.[8]

Extravagant conceit and dogmatism, however, are not rare in the human
species. These two roots of the Jacobin intellect exist in all
countries, underground and indestructible. Everywhere they are kept
from sprouting by the established order of things; everywhere are they
striving to overturn old historic foundations, which press them down.