[9] De Tocqueville, “L’Ancien régime,” 237. — Cf.  “L’an 2440,” by Mercier, III. vols.  One of these lovely daydreams in all its detail may be found here.  The work was first published in 1770.  “The Revolution,” says one of the characters, “was brought about without an effort, through the heroism of a great man, a royal philosopher worthy of power, because he despised it,” etc. (Tome II. 109.)

[10] “Mémoires de M. Bouillé,” p.70. — Cf.  Barante, “Tableau de la litt. française au dixhuitième siècle,” p. 318.  “Civilization and enlightenment were supposed to have allayed all passions and softened all characters.  It seemed as if morality had become easy of practice and that the balance of social order was so well adjusted that nothing could disturb it.”

[11] See in Rousseau, in the “Lettre à M. de Beaumont,” a scene of this description, the establishment of deism and toleration, associated with a similar discourse.

[12] Roux et Buchez, “Histoire parlementaire,” IV. 322, the address made on the 11th Feb., 1790.  “What an affecting and sublime address,” says a deputy.  It was greeted by the Assembly, with “unparalleled applause.”  The whole address ought to have been quoted entire.

[13] The number of cerebral cells is estimated (the cortical layer) at twelve hundred millions (in 1880)and the fibers binding them together at four thousand millions. (Today in 1990 it is thought that the brain contains one million million neurons and many times more fibers.  Sr.)

[14] In his best-selling book “The Blind Watchmaker",(Published 1986) the biologist Richard Dawkins writes:  “All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way.  A true watchmaker has foresight:  he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind’s eye.  Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind.  It has no mind and no mind’s eye. it does not plan for the future.  It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all.  If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.” (Sr.)

[15] Already Michel Montaigne (1533-1592) had noted man’s tendency to over-estimate his own powers of judgment: 

’So, to return to myself, the sole feature for which I hold myself in some esteem is that in which no man has ever thought himself defective.  My self-approbation is common, and shared by all.  For who has ever considered himself lacking in common sense?  This would be a self-contradictory proposition.  Lack of sense is a disease that never exists when it is seen; it is most tenacious and strong, yet the first glance from the patient’s eye pierces it through and disperses it, as a dense mist is dispersed