You lay down metaphysic propositions which infer universal consequences, and then you attempt to limit logic by despotism.
Edmund Burke: “You lay down metaphysic propositions which infer universal consequences, and then you attempt to limit logic by…”
Editor's note · Context
From his critique of the French Revolution, Burke argues that the revolutionaries apply abstract principles inconsistently and despotically.
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Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.





