It seems as if we could not avoid
concluding, that just as France owes her fearful troubles to other
things and her civilizedness to equality, so we owe our immunity from
fearful troubles to other things, and our uncivilizedness to inequality.
"Knowledge is easy," says the wise man, "to him that understandeth";[482]
easy, he means, to him who will use his mind simply and rationally, and
not to make him think he can know what he cannot, or to maintain, _per
fas et nefas_, a false thesis with which he fancies his interests to be
bound up. And to him who will use his mind as the wise man recommends,
surely it is easy to see that our shortcomings in civilization are due
to our inequality; or, in other words, that the great inequality of
classes and property, which came to us from the Middle Age and which we
maintain because we have the religion of inequality, that this
constitution of things, I say, has the natural and necessary effect,
under present circumstances, of materializing our upper class,
vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.
Pages:
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511