In truth, however, the real cause of those terrible consequences lies deeper, and a fault of a more fundamental kind than any glossing over the frailties of historical characters has at once rendered his work so popular and its consequences so tremendous. Rely upon it, truth and reason, all-powerful and even victorious in the end, are never a match for sophistry and passion in the outset. When you hear of a philosophical historical work going through half-a-dozen editions in six months, or selling fifty thousand copies in a year, you may be sure that there is a large intermixture of error, misrepresentation, and one-sidedness in its composition. The cause is, that truth and reason are in general distasteful in the outset to the human mind; and it is by slow degrees, and the force of experience alone, that their ascendency is established. What attracts, in the first instance, in thought, independent of the charms of eloquence and the graces of composition--which of course are indispensable to great success--is _coincidence with the tendency and aspirations of general thought_. But so prone to error and delusion is the human mind, from its inherent character and original texture, that it is a hundred to one that general thought at any one time, especially if it is one of considerable excitement or vehement feeling, is founded in error. And thus it often happens, that the works which have the most unbounded success at their first publication, and for a considerable time after, are precisely those which contain the largest portion of error, and are likely, when reduced into practice, to have the most fatal effects upon the best interests of the species. Witness the works of Rousseau and Voltaire in France, to whose influence the first revolution is mainly to be ascribed; those of Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Eugene Sue, who have been chiefly instrumental in bringing about the still more widespread convulsions of our times.