Might and right must not be confounded. A being might have immense power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, that of one of the forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it, it is only a fearful and terrible thing, it is not a person,--it may inspire, in the highest degree, fear and hope,--it has no right to respect; one has no duties towards it. Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty. They are born at the same time, are developed and perish together. It might even be said that duty and right make one, and are the same being, having a face on two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your respect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I am a free being? But you are yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right and your duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in me of an equal duty.[195] I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone, is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ; for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses, mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I. There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not it,[196] for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,--they are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law, and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the ability to do the other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich, beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate; for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. God has made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God