mselves their minds
are made up to push through. With the self-confidence of youth and of
theorists they draw their own conclusions and hug themselves with their
strong belief in them. "These gentlemen," says a keen observer,[2228]

"professed great disdain for their predecessors, the Constituents,
treating them as short-sighted and prejudiced people incapable of
profiting by circumstances."

"To the observations of wisdom, and disinterested wisdom,[2229] they
replied with a scornful smile, indicative of the aridity proceeding from
self-conceit. One exhausted himself in reminding them of events and in
deducing causes from these; one passed in turn from theory to experience
and from experience to theory to show them their identity and, when they
condescended to reply it was to deny the best authenticated facts and
contest the plainest observations by opposing to these a few trite
maxims although eloquently expressed. Each regarded the other as if they
alone were worthy of being heard, each encouraging the other with
the idea that all resistance to their way of looking at things was
pusillanimity."

In their own eyes they alone are capable and they alone are patriotic.
Because they have read Rousseau and Mably, because their tongue is
untied and their pen flowing, because they know how to handle the
formuloe of books and reason out an abstract proposition, they fancy that
they are statesmen.[2230] Because they have read Plutarch and "Le Jeune
Anacharsis," because they aim to construct a perfect society out of
metaphysical conceptions, because they are in a ferment about the coming
millennium, they imagine themselves so many exalted spirits. They have
no doubt whatever on these two points even after everything has fallen
in through their blunders, even after their obliging hands are sullied
by the foul grasp of robbers whom they were the first to instigate, and
by that of executioners of which they are partners in complicity.[2231]
To this extent is self-conceit the worst of sophists. Convinced of their
superior enlightenment and of the purity of their sentiments, they
put forth the theory that the government should be in their hands.
Consequently they lay hold of it in the Legislative body in ways that
are going to turn against them in the Convention. They accept for allies
the worst demagogues of the extreme "Left," Chabot, Couthon, Merlin,
Baziere, Thuriot, Lecointre, and outside of it, Danton, Robespierre,
Marat him