This, then, was the public in whose atmosphere and with whose co-operation the philosophy of revolutionary enlightenment sprung up. It was here that it learned its rapid and superficial mode of study, its rejection of an historical spirit in favour of multitudinous present actualities, its taste for rhetorically adorned formulæ and commonplaces. When the construction of the best State was to be set about, common characteristics were collected from the natural history of mankind, such as the dislike to pain, the impulse towards pleasure, the capacity of forming, from sensations, representations and conclusions. These characteristics were merely put together as the concept man, and from this abstract man were deduced, as in a mathematical formula, the laws of politics, morals, and rights. Since all men had the same natural impulse towards happiness, the State must render it possible for them all to reach that aim. Since all had a natural capacity to form concepts and conclusions, they would be sure to employ the right means to that end so soon as their hands were left free, or in case of a momentary mistake these right means logically pointed out to them. That passion is, in point of fact, in the great majority of men, stronger than reason, and desire more impetuous than thought, was disregarded by these admirers of abstract reason; the fact that each man had the faculty of drawing a logical conclusion appeared to them to insure his conforming his conduct to the requirements of that conclusion. If a logically formulated proof of the excellence of one of the Constitutions they had sketched could be arrived at, they fancied that the security and durability of its construction was perfectly guaranteed. On the other hand, that the preservation of constitutional order required other forces besides logical discussions, this was altogether outside their range of thought. But logic knows no limits beyond the evolution of its own conceptions. The existing condition of things lent itself to being ground to powder. Before the critical assault of the new teaching no defence of the hoary unrighteousness of the Old Régime could make a stand; the pity was that, according to its own principles, the former found it impossible to attain to a firm and enduring constitution of any sort or colour.