...to take flight from moderation and realism. Edmund Burke complained at the time of those who "are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature." The framers, however, were practical men. They gave us not a declaration of...

...friends expressed feelings of exaltation and triumph. "This sort of people," Burke charged, "are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. . . .They have perverted in themselves, and in those that attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies...

...metaphysicians of France. At one point in the Reflections, for example, Burke complains that they "are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgotten about his nature. " And what man's "nature" means here is suggested by his next words: "Without...

...suffer not a little, when no political purpose is served by the depravation. This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man,...his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart. They have perverted...

...professors alike, who would remake our constitution out of moral philosophy: "This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature."7 Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew man's nature, and it is to...

...fundamentally flawed. Operating from first principles rather than empirical study, they became 'so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature'. In this respect, too, the Channel operated as no effective barrier. The philosophe was an English phenomenon...

...public or private morality all of its own. In the Reflections, Burke referred disparagingly to those "so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature." Confounded early by the failed promises of a life of reason, WB Yeats wrote, "All my moral endeavour...

...suffer not a little when no political purpose is served by the depravation. This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping...

...insist on 'the unity of man'. 5 Burke could reply to Paine in the same spirit: the reformers were 'so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature'. They were the people who 'profess principles of extremes; and who under the name of religion teach...

...so much inclined to make "the extreme medicine of the constitution its daily bread," and so caught up "with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgot his nature."59 Burke did not deny the existence or even the significance of natural rights. His point was...