carry on a
fight he would end the war "at the first encounter."[3117]--"If I could
stand the march, I would go in person and carry out my views. At the
head of a small party of trusty troops the rebels could be easily put
down to the last man, and in one day. I know something of military art,
and; without boasting, I can answer for success."--On any difficulty
occurring, it is owing to his advice not having been taken; he is the
great political physician: his diagnosis from the beginning of the
Revolution is always correct, his prognosis infallible, his therapeutics
efficacious, humane and salutary. He provides the panacea and he should
be allowed to prescribe it; only, to ensure a satisfactory operation, he
should himself administer the dose. Let the public lancet, therefore,
be put in his hands that he may perform the humanitarian operation of
bloodletting. "Such are my opinions. I have published them in my works.
I have signed them with my name and I am not ashamed of it.... If you
are not equal to me and able to comprehend me so much the worse for
you."[3118] In other words, in his own eyes, Marat is in advance of
everybody else and, through his superior genius and character, he is the
veritable savior.

Such are the symptoms by which medical men recognize immediately one of
those partial lunatics who may not be put in confinement, but who are
all the more dangerous;[3119] the malady, as they would express it in
technical terms, may be called the ambitious delirium, well known in
lunatic asylums.--Two predispositions, one an habitually perverted
judgment, and the other a colossal excess of self-esteem,[3120]
constitute its sources, and nowhere are both more prolific than in
Marat. Never did a man with such diversified culture, possess such an
incurably perverted intellect. Never did a man, after so many abortive
speculations and such repeated malpractices, conceive and maintain so
high an opinion of himself. Each of these two sources in him augments
the other: through his faculty of not seeing things as they are, he
attributes to himself virtue and genius; satisfied that he possesses
genius and virtue, he regards his misdeeds as merits and his whims as
truths.--Thenceforth, and spontaneously, his malady runs its own course
and becomes complex; to the ambitious delirium comes the persecution
mania. In effect, the evident or demonstrated truths which he advances
should strike the public at once; if they burn slowly or