The things we do!

They enter a suspected
coffee-house, drive out the inmates with insults, lay hands on a
gentleman who is supposed not to have cried out as correctly and as
lustily as themselves, and come near to hanging him.[11] - Such is
the fruit of the philosophy and the attitudes of the eighteenth
century. Men believed that, for the organization of a perfect
society and the permanent establishment of freedom, justice, and
happiness on earth, an inspiration of sentiments and an act of the
will would suffice. The inspiration came and the act was fulfilled;
they have been carried away, delighted, affected and out of their
minds. Now comes the reaction, when they have to fall back upon
themselves. The effort has succeeded in accomplishing all that it
could accomplish, namely, a deluge of emotional demonstrations and
slogans, a verbal and not a real contract ostentatious fraternity
skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade, an outpouring of feeling
evaporating through its own pageantry - in short, an agreeable
carnival of a day's duration.


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