Indeed, if the power of these projectors bore any proportion to their presumption, our neighbours would be in a most alarming condition. To extemporize a social system, a new humanity, or at least a new Christianity, is now as common as it was formerly, on leaving college, to rhyme a tragedy. The social projector, sublimely confident in himself, seems to expect to realize, on a most gigantic scale, the fable of Mesmerism; he will put the whole world in _rapport_ with him, and it shall have no will but his, and none but such blind, imitative movements as he shall impress on it. And it is to a sort of _coma_ that these projectors would, for the most part, reduce mankind--a state where there is some shadow of thought and passion, but no will, no self-direction, no connexion between the past and present--a state aimless, evanescent, and of utter subjugation. Fortunately these social reformers, however daring, use no other instruments of warfare than speech and pamphlets; they do not betake themselves to the sharp weapons of political conspiracy. They must be permitted, therefore, to rave themselves out. And this they will do the sooner from their very number. There are too many prophets; they spoil the trade; the Mesmerizers disturb and distract each other's efforts; the _fixed idea_ that is in them will not fix any where else. Those who, in the natural order of things, should be dupes, aspire to be leaders, and the leaders are at a dead struggle for some novelty wherewith to attract followers. We have, for instance, M. Pierre Leroux, most distinguished of the _Humanitarians_, the last sect which figures on the scene, bidding for disciples--with what, will our readers think?--with the doctrine of metempsychosis! It is put forward as a fresh inducement to improve the world we live in, that we shall live in it again and again, and nowhere else, and be our own most remote posterity. We are not assured that there is any thread of consciousness connecting the successive apparitions of the same being; yet some slight filament of this kind must be traceable, for we are informed that M. Leroux gives himself out to have been formerly Plato. He has advanced thus far in the scale of progression, that he is at present M. Leroux.[29]