To ordinary thinkers, to unprejudiced outsiders,--to Americans, let us say, or Frenchmen,--there does not seem to be room even for an argument.
And they defend themselves by the opinion of Socrates, of Cato, of Plato, and of St. Clement; but, as you say, they misunderstand the opinions of these thinkers.
Thinkers meditated, while the soil, that is to say, the people, traversed by revolutionary currents, trembled under them with indescribably vague epileptic shocks.