had any profound knowledge, or even really extensive reading. He was a
dreamer, a theorist, a sentimentalist. He was the arch-priest of all
sensationalism in the guise of logic. What more acceptable to the vile
people of his age than the theory that in their collective capacity they
could not err, that the universal reason was divine? What more logical
than its culmination in that outrageous indecency, the worship of Reason
in the person of a prostitute!

Again, Rousseau's notion of the limitations of law and the prerogative
of the people, carried out, would lead to the utter subversion of
central authority, and reduce nations to an absolute democracy of small
communities. They would divide and subdivide until society was resolved
into its original elements. This idea existed among the early Greek
states, when a state rarely comprised more than a single city or town or
village, such as might be found among the tribes of North American
Indians. The great political question in Ancient Greece was the autonomy
of cities, which kept the whole land in constant wars and dissensions
and quarrels and jealousies, and prevented that centralization of power
which would have made Greece unconquerable and the mistress of the
world. Our wholesome American system of autonomy in local affairs, with
a common authority in matters affecting the general good, is organized
liberty. But the ancient and outgrown idea of unregulated autonomy was
revived by Rousseau; and though it could not be carried out by the
French Revolutionists who accepted nearly all his theories, it led to
the disintegration of France, and the multiplication of offices fatal to
a healthy central power. Napoleon broke up all this in his centralized
despotism, even if, to keep the Revolutionary sympathy, he retained the
Departments which were substituted for the ancient Provinces.

The extreme spirit of democratic liberty which is the characteristic of