Then, gradually resuming his ordinary tone, he continued,-- "Revolutions that have no definite objects made clear by the positive experience of history; revolutions, in a word, that aim less at substituting one law or one dynasty for another, than at changing the whole scheme of society, have been little attempted by real statesmen.
Even Lycurgus is proved to be a myth who never existed.

Such organic changes are but in the day-dreams of philosophers who lived apart from the actual world, and whose opinions (though generally they were very benevolent, good sort of men, and wrote in an elegant poetical style) one would no more take on a plain matter of life, than one would look upon Virgil's Eclogues as a faithful picture of the ordinary pains and pleasures of the peasants who tend our sheep.

Read them as you would read poets, and they are delightful.

But attempt to shape the world according to the poetry, and fit yourself for a madhouse.

The farther off the age is from the realization of such projects, the more these poor philosophers have indulged them.