People wanted to go fast, conveniently, directly,
and, for guide, accepted unreason under the name of reason. Now, in
the light of disastrous experience, there was a return to the narrow,
stony, long and painful road which alone leads, both, in speculation,
to truth and, in practice, to salvation. - Besides, this second
conclusion, like the first one, was due to recent experience.
Henceforth it was evident that, in political and social matters, ideas
quickly descend from speculation to practice. When anybody talks to
me about stones, plants, animals and the stars I must, to listen, be
interested in these; if anybody talks to me about man and society, it
suffices that I am a man and a member of that society; for then it
concerns myself, my nearest, daily, most sensitive and dearest
interests; by virtue of being a tax-payer and a subject, a citizen and
an elector, a property-owner or a proletarian, a consumer or a
producer, a free-thinker or a Catholic, a father, son or husband, the
doctrine is addressed to me; to affect me it has only to be within
reach, through interpreters and others that promulgate it.
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