There is an illusion of central position, justifying one's own purposes as right and everybody else¹s as wrong, and providing a proper degree of paranoia. Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.
We are always making God our accomplice so that we may legalize our own inequities.
The masses are the material of democracy, but its form-that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility-can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.
Sympathy is the first condition of criticism; reason and justice presuppose, at their origin, emotion.
