ken@ihuxq.UUCP (ken perlow) (05/02/84)
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My patience with net evangelists has been known to wear thin,
but an analogous exaltation of rationalism got me to dig out the
quote below. It's from an article in the 4/15 NY Times Magazine
(the King James version, of course) called "In Praise of Exuberance"
by London Times correspondent Bernard Levin.
I found this particular paragraph especially amusing as a student
of the French Revolutionary Calendar in particular, the French
Revolution in general.
***** BEGIN QUOTE
Masked feelings would have seemed very odd to most of our ancestors.
The blame is often laid at the door of the 18th century, the "Age of
Reason," but in France, where the rationalist spirit was strongest,
they never lost sight of the sensibility that defined them as human.
Rousseau must have been one of the most emotional and sentimental men
who ever lived, and Diderot not much less so. It was those who denied
feeling and enthroned Reason above the firmament who turned the Revo-
lution into bloody terror. Across the Atlantic, the framers of the
United States Constitution took full account of mankind's eternal
propensity to act upon its feelings and justify its actions retro-
spectively by reason. That is presumably why the Constitution has
lasted as long as it has. Who but a specialist historian could recite
the names of the months in the French Revolution's tidy calendar --
Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivose... -- and who, having discovered what they
mean -- Misty, Frosty, Snowy... -- would want to? Even Thermidor, the
month when Robespierre fell, is now known only as a method of cooking
lobster.
***** END QUOTE
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