" But a community having humane manners
is a community of equals, and in such a community great social
inequalities have really no meaning, while they are at the same time a
menace and an embarrassment to perfect ease of social intercourse. A
community with the spirit of society is eminently, therefore, a
community with the spirit of equality. A nation with a genius for
society, like the French or the Athenians, is irresistibly drawn towards
equality. From the first moment when the French people, with its
congenital sense for the power of social intercourse and manners, came
into existence, it was on the road to equality. When it had once got a
high standard of social manners abundantly established, and at the same
time the natural, material necessity for the feudal inequality of
classes and property pressed upon it no longer, the French people
introduced equality and made the French Revolution. It was not the
spirit of philanthropy which mainly impelled the French to that
Revolution, neither was it the spirit of envy, neither was it the love
of abstract ideas, though all these did something towards it; but what
did most was the spirit of society.
Pages:
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490