Peace was sacrificed to exactly those metaphysical theories of equality and justice which he most deeply abhorred.

The doctrine of progress found an eloquent defender in that last and noblest utterance of Condorcet which is still perhaps its most perfect justification.

On all hands there was the sense of a new world built by the immediate thought of man upon the wholehearted rejection of past history.

Politics was emphatically declared to be a system of which the truths could be stated in terms of mathematical certainty.

The religious spirit which Burke was convinced lay at the root of good gave way before a general scepticism which, from the outset of his life, he had declared incompatible with social order.