Later commentators observed, with sadness, that Erasmus seemed to underestimate the real depth of human attraction to violence, unreason, and fanaticism—probably because of his own cordial personality. Immune to the thrill of battle and the intoxication of radical ideas himself, he simply could not understand why others found them so powerful. He was no Machiavelli in his reading of the psychological (or political, or economic) machinery that can lead to war. Other humanists have had a similar blind spot, in other times, and many are thus left helplessly wondering again and again why everyone
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