The Revolution was not directed against _the established_, but against _the establishment in question_, against a _particular_ establishment. It did away with _this_ ruler, not with _the_ ruler--on the contrary, the French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the old vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous ones a securely established position, _i. e._ it simply set virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again, are on their part distinguished from each other only as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc. To this day the revolutionary principle has gone no farther than to assail only _one_ or _another_ particular establishment, _i. e._ be _reformatory_. Much as may be _improved_, strongly as "discreet progress" may be adhered to, always there is only a _new master_ set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a--building up. We are still at the distinction of the young Philistine from the old one. The Revolution began in _bourgeois_ fashion with the uprising of the third estate, the middle class; in _bourgeois_ fashion it dries away. It was not the _individual man_--and he alone is _Man_--that became free, but the _citizen_, the _citoyen_, the _political_ man, who for that very reason is not _Man_ but a specimen of the human species, and more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a _free citizen_. In the Revolution it was not the _individual_ who acted so as to affect the world's history, but a _people_; the _nation_, the sovereign nation, wanted to effect everything. A fancied _I_, an idea, such as the nation is, appears acting; _i. e._, the individuals contribute themselves as tools of this idea, and act as "citizens."