On beholding the feudal form thus take possession of everything, we are tempted to believe at the first blush that its essential and vital principle had also universal predominance. But this is a great error. The institutions and elements of society, which were not analogous to the feudal system, did not renounce their peculiar nature or principle, although borrowing the feudal form. The feudal church did not cease to be animated and governed at bottom by the theocratic principle; and in order to give it prevalence, it struggled unceasingly, sometimes in concert with the royal power, sometimes with the pope, and sometimes with the people, to destroy the system whose livery, so to speak, it wore. It was the same with royalty and the corporations; the first continued, at bottom, to be actuated by the monarchical principle, the last by the democratic. In spite of their feudal trappings, these varied elements of the European society constantly laboured to free themselves from a form alien to their nature, and to assume that which corresponded to their own vital principle. After demonstrating the universality of the feudal form, it behoves us, then, to avoid concluding therefrom the universality of the feudal principle, and studying that system indiscriminately wherever its outward aspect meets our eyes. In order to gain a full knowledge and comprehension of it, in order to unfold and form a judgment of its effect upon modern civilisation, we must seek it only where the principle and form are in harmony; we must contemplate it in the hierarchy of the conquerors of the European territory. There truly resides the feudal society, and upon it I shall forthwith enter.