[Footnote 11127: Moniteur, XVIII., 275. (Session of Oct. 26. 1793, speech by Barère.) "This is the most revolutionary step you can take." (Applause.)] [Footnote 11128: Ibid., 520. (Report of Barère and decree in conformity). "The representatives sent on mission are required to conform strictly to the acts of the Committee of Public Safety. Generals and other agents of the executive power will, under no pretext, obey any special order, that they may refuse to carry out the said acts."--Moniteur, XVIII., 291. (Report by Barère, Oct. 29, 1793.) At this date one hundred and forty representatives are on mission.] [Footnote 11129: Archives Nationales, AF. II., 22. (Papers of the 'Committee of Public Safety. Note on the results of the revolutionary government without either date or signature.) "The law of Frimaire 14 created two centers of influence from which action spread, in the sense of the Committee, and which affected the authorities. These two pivots of revolutionary rule outside the Committee were the representatives of the people on missions and the national agents controlling the district committees. The word revolutionary government alone exercised an incalculable magical influence."--Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., p. 2, and following pages.] BOOK SECOND. THE JACOBIN PROGRAM. CHAPTER I. THE JACOBIN PARTY I. The Doctrine. Program of the Jacobin party.--Abstract principle and spontaneous development of the theory. Nothing is more dangerous than a general idea in narrow and empty minds: as they are empty, it finds no knowledge there to interfere with it; as they are narrow it is not long before it occupies the place entirely. Henceforth they no longer belong to themselves but are mastered by it; it works in them and through them, the man, in the true sense of the word, being possessed. Something which is not himself, a monstrous parasite, a foreign and disproportionate conception, lives within him, developing and giving birth to the evil purposes with which it is pregnant. He did not foresee that he would have them; he did not know what his dogma contained, what venomous and murderous consequences were to issue from it. They issue from it fatally, each in its turn, and under the pressure of circumstances, at first anarchical consequences and now despotic consequences. Having obtained power, the Jacobin brings his fixed idea along with him; whether at the head of the government or in opposition to it, this idea is fruitful, and the all-powerful dogma projects over a new domain the innumerable links of its endless chain. II. A Communist State.