We have no right to complain, for it is we ourselves who incessantly add fuel to the fire--and this is the most deep-seated of our maladies. It is we who give to the Social Republic its chief strength. It is the chaos of our political ideas and our political morality--that chaos disguised sometimes under the word _democracy_, sometimes under that of _equality_, sometimes under that of _people_--which opens all the gates, and throws down all the ramparts of society before it. We say that Democracy is everything. The men of the Social Republic reply, “Democracy is ourselves.” We proclaim, in language of infinite confusion, the absolute equality of rights and the sovereign right of numbers. The men of the Social Republic come forward and say, “Count our numbers.” The perpetual confusion of the true and the false, the good and the bad, the possible and the chimerical, which prevails in our own policy, our own language, our own acts--this it is which has enfeebled our arm for defence, and given to the Social Republic a confidence, an arrogance, and an influence for attack, which of itself it would never possess. When this confusion shall be dissipated; when we shall arrive at that period of maturity in which free nations, instead of blindly following their first impressions, whithersoever they may lead, see things as they really are, assign to the different elements of society their just measure, and to words their true meaning, and regulate their ideas as they do their affairs, with that firm moderation which rejects all fantasies, admits all necessities, respects all rights, has regard to all interests, and represses all usurpations;--those from below no less than those from above--those of fanaticism no less than those of selfishness: when we shall have reached this point, although the Social Republic may not entirely disappear, and although we may not have entirely crushed its efforts nor annihilated its dangers (for it derives its ambition and its strength from sources that none can dry up), still it will be controlled by the union and the order of society; all that is most absurd and perverse in its doctrines will be incessantly combated and defeated, and it will in time take its due place in that vast and imposing development of the human race which is passing before our eyes. CHAPTER V. WHAT ARE THE REAL AND ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE? The first step towards extricating ourselves out of the chaos in which we are plunged, is, a full understanding and frank admission of all the real and essential elements of which society in France is now composed. It is because we misunderstand these elements, or refuse them the place and the consideration they deserve, that we remain in, or relapse into, chaos.