The monarchy of estates (so I will call absolute royalty, the time of the kings _before_ the revolution) kept the individual in dependence on a lot of little monarchies. These were fellowships (societies) like the guilds, the nobility, the priesthood, the burgher class, cities, communes, etc. Everywhere the individual must regard himself _first_ as a member of this little society, and yield unconditional obedience to its spirit, the _esprit de corps_, as his monarch. More, _e. g._, than the individual nobleman himself must his family, the honor of his race, be to him. Only by means of his _corporation_, his estate, did the individual have relation to the greater corporation, the State,--as in Catholicism the individual deals with God only through the priest. To this the third estate now, showing courage to negate _itself as an estate_, made an end. It decided no longer to be and be called an _estate_ beside other estates, but to glorify and generalize itself into the "_nation_." Hereby it created a much more complete and absolute monarchy, and the entire previously ruling _principle of estates_, the principle of little monarchies inside the great, went down. Therefore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a revolution against the first two privileged estates: it was against the little monarchies of estates in general. But, if the estates and their despotism were broken (the king too, we know, was only a king of estates, not a citizen-king), the individuals freed from the inequality of estate were left. Were they now really to be without estate and "out of gear," no longer bound by any estate, without a general bond of union? No, for the third estate had declared itself the nation only in order not to remain an estate _beside_ other estates, but to become the _sole estate_. This sole _estate_ is the nation, the "_State_." What had the individual now become? A political Protestant, for he had come into immediate connection with his God, the State. He was no longer, as an aristocrat, in the monarchy of the nobility; as a mechanic, in the monarchy of the guild; but he, like all, recognized and acknowledged only--_one lord_, the State, as whose servants they all received the equal title of honor, "citizen."