Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/490

 were immoral and only the common people were good and moral. This view is due to Rousseau. In the new Declaration of Human Rights which the French Convention, that powerful constitutional assembly, published, it is even set forth in a special article—Article 19—which reads "Toute institution, qui ne suppose le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible, est vicieuse." (Every institution which does not assume that the people is good and the magistracy corruptible is faulty.) You see that is exactly the opposite of the confidence which is called for today, according to which there is no greater crime than to doubt the good-will and the virtue of the magistrates, while the people are considered on principle a sort of dangerous beast and centre of corruption.

At that time the opposite dogma even went so far that almost anybody whose coat was in good repair appeared for that very reason corrupt and suspicious, and virtue and purity and patriotic morality were believed to be found only in those who had no good coat. It was the period of sans-culottism.

This point of view had really a foundation of truth, which, however, appears in a false and perverted form. Now there is nothing more dangerous than a principle which appears in false and perverted form; for, whatever attitude you take toward it, you are sure to fare badly. If you adopt this truth in its false, perverted form, then, at certain times, this will produce the most terrible devastation, as was the case in the period of sans-culottism. If, on account of the false form, you reject the whole proposition as false, you fare still worse, for you have rejected a truth, and, in the case which we are considering, a truth without whose recognition no wholesome progress is possible in modern political affairs.

There is therefore no other procedure possible than to overcome the false and perverted form of that proposition, and to try to establish clearly its true meaning.

Current public opinion is, as I said, disposed to stamp