A maxim which has given rise, and naturally, to the sorest and most plausible of modern grievances, that incurable impatience of whatever is, that boundless disquiet, that insatiable thirst for change in the pursuit of a social condition which shall give at last to man, to every man, all the happiness to which he aspires. {36} This is the state in which the eighteenth century has placed men's souls. And I here speak of upright, honest, and sincere minds, not carried away by selfishness, not domineered over by evil passions, which think of others, and only wish for themselves as well as for those others what they consider legitimate. The great mistakes and ills of any epoch are those of the good. These must be looked to and provided against, for there lies the hidden danger. Who can struggle against ill if the good are themselves infected with it? I have seen the last of the master spirits of the eighteenth century--those who had remained faithful to it. I have seen them emerging from our revolution after their fearful experience of it. The condition of their minds was a touching and instructive spectacle. They were sorrowful, but not discouraged; full of esteem and affection for mankind; full of confidence and hope despite so many mistakes and reverses. The same fertility of wit, the same generosity of heart, the same spirit of justice and progress animated them. They accounted for their momentary failure by the violence of passion, the force of old habits, the want of public intelligence, the too hasty application of good principles carried to too great a length. And while their explanation bore witness to their sincerity and perseverance, still there was visible and perceptible in them at every step a persistance in the same mistakes; the same absence of moral dogma and religious faith; the same idolatry of man, the same tenderness towards him, the same pretensions for him. They had lost nothing of their noble ambition or tender sympathy for human nature, but they had learned nothing of its inward laws nor of the true methods for its government. {37} Thus a secret feeling of disquiet was apparent through the constancy of their ideas and of their hope; and they remained melancholy after their explanation, as if hardly satisfied with it themselves.