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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 1"

A railway conductor is not willing that his
locomotive should be deprived of coal, nor to have the rails he is
about to run on broken up. - This arrangement, with all its
drawbacks and inconveniences, is the best one yet arrived at by
human experience for the security of societies against despotism and
anarchy. For the absolute power which establishes or saves them may
also oppress or exhaust them, there is a gradual substitution of
differentiated powers, held together through the mediation of a
third umpire, caused by reciprocal dependence and an which is common
to both.
Experience, however, is unimportant to the members of the
Constituent Assembly; under the banner of principles they sunder one
after another all the ties which keep the two powers together
harmoniously. - There must not be an Upper Chamber, because this
would be an asylum or a nursery for aristocrats. Moreover, "the
nation being of one mind," it is averse to "the creation of
different organs." So, applying ready-made formulas and metaphors,
they continue to produce ideological definitions and distinctions.


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