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Updated: May 13, 2025
There is but one vote in forty-five against me. I must obey the will of the people!" To this he would not have failed to add, "Whose are the votes opposed to me? Those of ideologists, Jacobins, and peculators under the Directory." To such arguments what could have been answered? It must not be supposed that I am putting these words into Bonaparte's mouth. They fell from him oftener than once.
But there is a certain ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on the scholars or clerisy, which is of no import, unless the scholars heed it. In this country, the emphasis of conversation, and of public opinion, commends the practical man; and the solid portion of the community is named with significant respect in every circle. Our people are of Bonaparte's opinion concerning ideologists.
It thus leads to problems of abstraction and generalisation and to his whole theory of what he calls the 'intellectual states. He again closely coincides with the French ideologists. He starts by examining Locke and Condillac. He of course professes to hold that Condillac's version of Locke is illegitimate, and ridicules the famous formula penser c'est sentir.
There is but one vote in forty-five against me. I must obey the will of the people!" To this he would not have failed to add, "Whose are the votes opposed to me? Those of ideologists, Jacobins, and peculators under the Directory." To such arguments what could have been answered? It must not be supposed that I am putting these words into Bonaparte's mouth. They fell from him oftener than once.
To the workingmen who complain of the insufficiency of wages and the uncertainty of labor, political economy opposes the liberty of commerce; to the citizens who are seeking for the conditions of liberty and order, the ideologists respond with representative systems; to the tender souls who, having lost their ancient faith, ask the reason and end of their existence, religion proposes the unfathomable secrets of Providence, and philosophy holds doubt in reserve.
The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do, will never destroy the religious instinct. Religion will always be a political necessity. Would you undertake to govern a nation of logic-choppers? Napoleon was afraid to try; he persecuted ideologists. If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must give them something to feel. So let us accept the Roman Catholic Church with all its consequences.
It was utterly unworthy of a man of my lofty ideals, but what would you? Like other ideologists, I find it easier to preach than to practise. Shall I stop the carriage and remove the contamination of my disgusting person? Or shall I tell you how it happened?" "Tell me how it happened first. Then we will decide."
It is tyranny only whether individual or popular that utters its feeble sneers at the ideologists, as if mankind were brutes to whom instincts were all in all and ideas nothing. Where intellect and justice are enslaved by that unholy trinity Force; Dogma, and Ignorance the tendency of governments, and of those subjected to them, must of necessity be retrograde and downward.
By the way, that good-looking cousin of yours appears to have managed this affair very cleverly. She is a very fine girl to be wasted upon such a creature as the Lucien Lesage who has been screaming for mercy for a week past. Do you not think that it is a great pity? I acknowledged that I did. 'It is always so with women ideologists, dreamers, carried away by whims and imaginings.
They cannot understand that it is their hearts and not their heads that we want. When they have had influence upon a monarch, they have invariably ruined his career. Look at Henry the Fourth and Louis the Fourteenth. They are all ideologists, dreamers, sentimentalists, full of emotion and energy, but without logic or foresight. Look at that accursed Madame de Stael!
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