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They have been intoxicated with great ideas, such as liberty, or

equality, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or

the brotherhood of humanity, and they no longer care to consider

how these ideas must be limited in practice or harmonized with

the conditions of human life. They are full of light, but the

light to them has become only a sort of luminous mist or

blindness. Almost every one has known some enthusiastic

half-educated person, who sees everything at false distances, and

in erroneous proportions.

With this disorder of eyesight may be contrasted another-of those

who see not far into the distance, but what is near only; who

have been engaged all their lives in a trade or a profession; who

are limited to a set or sect of their own. Men of this kind have

no universal except their own interests or the interests of their

class, no principle but the opinion of persons like themselves,

no knowledge of affairs beyond what they pick up in the streets

or at their club.