In this artificial and declamatory tragedy of the Revolution he takes the leading part; the maniac and the barbarian slowly retire in the background on the appearance of the cuistre; Marat and Danton finally become effaced, or efface themselves, and the stage is left to Robespierre who attracts all the attention.[3187]--If we want to understand him we must look at him as he stands in the midst of his surroundings.

At the last stage of a dying intellectual vegetation, on the last branch of the eighteenth century, he is the final freak and dried fruit of the classical spirit.[3188] He has retained nothing of a worn-out system of philosophy but its lifeless dregs and well-conned formulae, the formulae of Rousseau, Mably, and Raynal, concerning "the people, nature, reason, liberty, tyrants, factions, virtue, morality," a ready-made vocabulary,[3189] expressions too ample, the meaning of which, ill-defined by the masters, evaporates in the hands of the disciple.

He never tries to get at this; his writings and speeches are merely long strings of vague abstract periods; there is no telling fact in them, no distinct, characteristic detail, no appeal to the eye evoking a living image, no personal, special observation, no clear, frank original impression.

It might be said of him that he never saw anything with his own eyes, that he neither could nor would see, that false conceptions have intervened and fixed themselves between him and the object;[3190] he combines these in logical sequence, and simulates the absent thought by an affected jargon, and this is all.

The other Jacobins alongside of him likewise use the same scholastic jargon; but none of them spout and spread out so complacently and lengthily as he.