So long as love is thus spoken of in the general, the ordinary serious Englishman will have no difficulty in inclining himself with respect while Madame Sand speaks of it. But when he finds that love implies, with her, social equality, he will begin to be staggered. And in truth for almost every Englishman Madame Sand's strong language about equality, and about France as the chosen vessel for exhibiting it, will sound exaggerated. "The human ideal," she says, "as well as the social ideal, is to achieve equality."[332] France, which has made equality its rallying cry, is therefore "the nation which loves and is loved," _la nation qui aime et qu'on aime_. The republic of equality is in her eyes "an ideal, a philosophy, a religion." She invokes the "holy doctrine of social liberty and fraternal equality, ever reappearing as a ray of love and truth amidst the storm." She calls it "the goal of man and the law of the future." She thinks it the secret of the civilization of France, the most civilized of nations. Amid the disasters of the late war she cannot forbear a cry of astonishment at the neutral nations, _insensibles à l'égorgement d'une civilisation comme la nôtre_, "looking on with insensibility while a civilization such as ours has its throat cut." Germany, with its stupid ideal of corporalism and _Kruppism_, is contrasted with France, full of social dreams, too civilized for war, incapable of planning and preparing war for twenty years, she is so incapable of hatred;--_nous sommes si incapables de haïr!_ We seem to be listening, not to George Sand, but to M. Victor Hugo, half genius, half charlatan; to M. Victor Hugo, or even to one of those French declaimers in whom we come down to no genius and all charlatan. The form of such outbursts as we have quoted will always be distasteful to an Englishman. It is to be remembered that they came from Madame Sand under the pressure and anguish of the terrible calamities of 1870. But what we are most concerned with, and what Englishmen in general regard too little, is the degree of truth contained in these allegations that France is the most civilized of nations, and that she is so, above all, by her "holy doctrine of equality." How comes the idea to be so current; and to be passionately believed in, as we have seen, by such a woman as George Sand? It was so passionately believed in by her, that when one seeks, as I am now seeking, to recall her image, the image is incomplete if the passionate belief is kept from appearing.