Page:Aphorisms — an address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, November 11, 1887.djvu/41

 the great French reactionary, De Bonald, which is never quite out of date: "Follies committed by the sensible, extravagances uttered by the clever, crimes perpetrated by the good,—there is what makes revolutions."

Radowitz was a Prussian soldier and statesman who died rather more than half a century ago, and left among many other things two or three volumes of short fragmentary pieces on politics, religion, literature, and art. They are intelligent and elevated, but contain hardly anything to our point to-night, unless it be this, that what is called Stupidity springs not at all from mere want of Understanding, but from the fact that the free use of a man's understanding is hindered by some definite vice: Frivolity, Envy, Dissipation, Covetousness, all these darling vices of fallen man,—these are at the bottom of what we name Stupidity. This is true enough, but it is not so much to the point as the saying of a highly judicious aphorist of my own acquaintance, that "Excessive anger against human