  For Rehberg, the Revolution was a failed experiment in idealism, a misguided attempt by French radicals to recreate society and state according to the principles of reason.  There lay a fundamental fallacy behind this experiment: the belief that the principles of reason are guidelines for concrete political practice, that they are blueprints to reconstruct all society and the state.  It was this belief, Rehberg argues, that sanctioned the frenzy of destruction behind the Revolution, the eagerness to abolish all the traditional political institutions of France.  Since the French radicals believed that the principles of reason mandate a specific kind of constitution, and since traditional French institutions were very far from that ideal, they held that these institutions are contrary to reason, so that it was obligatory to abolish them.  The chief fallacy behind revolutionary ideology, therefore, was its hyperrationalism, its belief that reason by itself dictates political practice.  Hence Rehberg made it his chief business to expose this fallacy.  In his many writings on the Revolution he argued emphatically and repeatedly that reason has no such powers.  Although he accepted that pure reason does determine the general principles of morality, he denied that it is by itself sufficient to dictate political  practice.[38]  Reason by itself demands only that our principles are just and universal, applying without exception to everyone alike; but such principles are indifferent regarding the specific form of a constitution; they determine nothing about which laws are just and universal in the specific circumstances of a country.  On their own, the general principles of reason are consistent with monarchy, democracy or aristocracy.  Which form of government is best can be determined by experience alone, by seeing which laws have the greatest utility under specific circumstances.  