The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1864 Excerpt: ... ory to practice. He admits the possibility, he is compelled by history to allow even the probability, that the most numerous popular assemblies, nay even whole nations, may at times be hurried away by the same passions, and under the dominion of a common error. This will of all is then of no more value, than the humors of any one individual: and must therefore be sacredly distinguished from the pure will which flows from universal reason. To this point then I entreat the reader's particular attention: for in this distinction, established by Rousseau himself, between the volonte de tears and the volonti generate, --that is, between the collective will, and a casual overbalance of wills--the falsehood or nothingness of the whole system becomes manifest. For hence it follows, as an inevitable consequence, that all which is said in the Contrat Social of that sovereign will, to which the right of universal legislation appertains, applies to no one human being, to no society or assemblage of human beings, and least of all to the mixed multitude that makes up the peo pie: but entirely and exclusively to reason itself which, it is true, dwells in every man potentially, but actually and in perfect purity is found in no man and in no body of men. This distinction the latter disciples of Rousseau chose completely to forget, and, --a far more melancholy case--the constituent legislators of France forgot it likewise. With a wretched parrotry they wrote and harangued without ceasing of the volonte generate--the inalienable sovereignty of the people: and by these highsounding phrases led on the vain, ignorant, and intoxicated populace to wild excesses and wilder expectations, which entailing on them the bitterness of disappointment cleared the way for military despotism, fo...