So it is. And men sacrifice themselves for these visions, which are for the sacrificed nearly always illusions, but illusions with which the whole of human certainty is mingled. The insurgent poetizes and gilds the insurrection, and men hurl themselves into these tragical things, intoxicating themselves upon what they are about to do. Who knows? Perhaps they will succeed; they are the minority; they have against them an entire army; but they are defending the right, natural law, the sovereignty of each over himself, which allows of no possible abdication, justice, and truth, and, if necessary, they die like the three hundred Spartans. They do not think of Don Quixote, but of Leonidas, and they go onward, and once the battle has begun they do not recoil, but dash forward head down-wards, having for hope an extraordinary victory, the revolution completed, progress restored to liberty, the aggrandizement of the human race, universal deliverance, and at the worst a Thermopylæ. These combats for progress frequently fail, and we have explained the cause. The mob is restive against the impulse of the Paladins; the heavy masses, the multitudes, fragile on account of their very heaviness, fear adventures, and there is adventure in the ideal. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that these are interests which are no great friends of the ideal and the sentimental. Sometimes the stomach paralyzes the heart. The greatness and beauty of France are, that she does not grow so stout as other nations, and knots the rope round her hips with greater facility. She is the first to wake and the last to fall asleep; she goes onward. She is seeking.