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There are other observations in Dr. Moore’s journal that are worthy of reflection. He points to, and this time remarks on, another seeming paradox. He has just witnessed horrible massacres in Paris, but finds that he can walk through the streets of the city at night in perfect safety:

But it is singular that those who carry their contempt of law and order a more criminal length than the highwayman and house-breaker, do not occasionally rob in the streets and highways also; and it must appear in a peculiar manner strange, to persons accustomed to live in a country where there are frequent robberies and burglaries, in spite of the government’s being undisturbed, and the laws in full force, to find none where all the hinges and supports of law and government are loose, and shaking from a recent convulsion.

What are we to conclude from this? That politics is the continuation of crime by other means?  Or the opposite: that crime is the continuation of politics by other means? Certainly it is a common observation in the world, now more than ever, that when self-righteous political passion forms an alliance with sadism and the urge toward crime, the worst atrocities result.

There are yet more lessons from Dr. Moore’s journal. Remember that he is trying to make sense of tremendous events as they happen, not with hindsight. He says:

Nothing is more difficult than the discovery of truth regarding recent events of an important and complicated nature, which many people are interested in falsifying, and almost every body inclined to represent according to their own prejudices.

Perhaps this is obvious, but it is often forgotten. Then Dr. Moore goes on to say something which is perhaps less obvious:

Every thing is viewed through such different mediums, and from such opposite points, that the various accounts which pour in from all quarters, cross, jostle, and confound each other in such a manner, that I have on some occasions been tempted to suspect, that as my information increased my knowledge diminished.

Dr. Moore here draws very clearly the distinction, often not made, between information and knowledge (to say nothing of wisdom). The ingredients that are needed to transform information into knowledge are perspective and judgment: a lesson more than ever important in the so-called information age. 

There is something to be said for reading disregarded old books. They rarely have nothing to say to us.