One day a Jacobin in the tribune declared: "We shall be a nation of gods!"--Fancies like these bring on lunacy, or, at all events, they create disease. "Some men are in a fever all day long," said a companion of St. Just; "I had it for twelve years..."[1255] Later on, "when advanced in life and trying to analyze their experiences, they cannot comprehend it."[1256] Another tells that, in his case, on a "crisis occurring, there was only a hair's breadth between reason and madness."--"When St. Just and myself," says Baudot, "discharged the batteries at Wissenbourg, we were most liberally thanked for it. Well, there was no merit in that; we knew perfectly well that the shot could not do us any harm."--Man, in this exalted state, is unconscious of obstacles, and, according to circumstances, rise above or falls below himself, freely spilling his own blood as well as the blood of others, heroic as a soldier and atrocious as a civilian; he is not to be resisted in either direction for his strength increases a hundredfold through his fury, and, on his tearing wildly through the streets, people get out of his way as on the approach of a mad bull. If they do not jump aside of their own accord, he will run at them, for he is unscrupulous as well as furious.--In every political struggle certain kinds of actions are prohibited; at all events, if the majority is sensible and wishes to act fairly, it repudiates them for itself. It will not violate any particular law, for, if one law is broken, this tends to the breaking of others. It is opposed to overthrowing an established government because every interregnum is a return to barbarism. It is opposed to the element of popular insurrection because, in such a resort, public power is surrendered to the irrationality of brutal passion. It is opposed to a conversion of the government into a machine for confiscation and murder because it deems the natural function of government to be the protection of life and property.--The majority, accordingly, in confronting the Jacobin, who allows himself all this,[1257] is like a unarmed man facing one who is fully armed.[1258] The Jacobin, on principle, holds the law in contempt, for the only law, which he accepts is arbitrary mob rule. He has no hesitation in proceeding against the government because, in his eyes, the government is a clerk which the people always has the right to remove. He welcomes insurrection because, through it, the people recover their sovereignty with no limitations.--Moreover, as with casuists, "the end justifies the means."[1259] "Let the colonies perish," exclaims a Jacobin in the Constituent Assembly, "rather than sacrifice a principle." "Should the day come," says St. Just, "when I become convinced that it is impossible to endow the French with mild, vigorous, and rational ways, inflexible against tyranny and injustice, that day I will stab myself." Meanwhile he guillotines the others. "We will make