Characters and passages from notebooks Author:Samuel Butler Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A REPUBLICAN IS a civil Fanatic, an Utopian Senator ; and as all Fanatics cheat themselves with Words, mistaking them for Things; so does he with the false Se... more »nse of Liberty. He builds Governments in the Air, and shapes them with his Fancy, as Men do Figures in the Clouds. He is a great Lover of his own Imaginations, which he calls his Country ; and is very much for Obedience to his own Sense, but not further. He is a nominal Politician, a faithful and loyal Subject to notional Governments, but an obstinate Rebel to the real. He dreams of a Republic waking; but as all Dreams are disproportionate and imperfect; so are his Conceptions of it: For he has not Wit enough to understand the Difference between Speculation and Practice. He is so much a Fool, that, like the Dog in the Fable, he loses his real Liberty, to enjoy the Shadow of it: For the more he studies to dislike the Government, he lives under, the further he is off his real Freedom. While he is modelling of Governments, he forgets that no Government was ever made by Model: For they are not built as Houses are, but grow as Trees do. And as some Trees thrive best in one Soil, some in another; so do Governments, but none equally in any, but all generally where they are most naturally produced; and therefore 'tis probable, the State of Venice would be no more the same in any other Country, if introduced, than their Trade of Glass- making. To avoid this he calculates his Model to the Elevation of a particular Clime, but with the same Success (if put in Practice) as Almanac-Makers do, to serve only for a Year; and his Predictions of Success would be according, but nothing so certain as their fair and foul Weather. He has not Judgment enough to observe, that all Models of Governments are merely Utopian, that have no Territory but...« less