Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/69

 by other philosophers, considering how much every Commonwealth, whatever its form of government, has been and still is indebted to this noble condition of mind. "For what man, in the natural state or course of thinking, did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length and breadth and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason. … Now I would gladly be informed how it is possible to account for such imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon of vapours ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions for which the narrowness of our mother-tongue has not yet assigned any other name besides that of madness or phrenzy." Montaigne also, who is usually so temperate in his language, cries out in a great passion of contemptuous indignation (book ii. chap. 32, "Defence of Seneca and Plutarch"): "It appears to each that the model form of human nature is in him; all others should be regulated in accordance with him: the ways which are not as his ways are feigned or wrong. What beastly stupidity! … Oh, the dangerous and insupportable donkeyishness! Quelle bestiale stupidité! … O l'asnerie dangereuse et insupportable!" And the great Italian writer already quoted, Leopardi, says ("Dialogue between Tristan and a Friend"): "The individuals have given way to the masses, say elegantly the modern thinkers. … Let the masses do all; though what they are to do without the individuals, being composed of individuals, I desire and hope to have explained to me by some of those now illuminating the world who understand individuals and masses." The careful reader will remark that the sarcasm here hinted does not touch me, while it wounds nearly all other reformers; they would reform by masses, I would reform by individuals; and my