eighteenth century. Men believed that, for the organization of a perfect society and the permanent establishment of freedom, justice, and happiness on earth, an inspiration of sentiments and an act of the will would suffice. The inspiration came and the act was fulfilled; they have been carried away, delighted, affected and out of their minds. Now comes the reaction, when they have to fall back upon themselves. The effort has succeeded in accomplishing all that it could accomplish, namely, a deluge of emotional demonstrations and slogans, a verbal and not a real contract ostentatious fraternity skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade, an outpouring of feeling evaporating through its own pageantry--in short, an agreeable carnival of a day's duration. The reason is that in the human mind there are two strata. One superficial, of which men are conscious, the other deep down, of which they are unconscious.[3112] The former unstable and vacillating like shifting sand, the latter stable and fixed like a solid rock, to which their caprices and agitation never descend. The latter alone determines the general inclination of the soil, the main current of human activity necessarily following the bent thus prepared for it.--Certainly embraces have been interchanged and oaths have been taken; but after, as before the ceremony, men are just what many centuries of administrative thralldom and one century of political literature have made them. Their ignorance and presumption, their prejudices, hatreds, and distrusts, their inveterate intellectual and emotional habits are still preserved. They are human, and their stomachs need to be filled daily. They have imagination, and, if bread be scarce, they fear that they may not get enough of it. They prefer to keep their money rather than to give it away. For this reason they spurn the claims which the State and individuals have upon them as much as possible. They avoid paying their debts. They willingly lay their hands on public property which is badly protected; finally they are disposed to regard gendarmes and proprietors as detrimental, and all the more so because this has been repeated to them over and over again, day after day, for a whole year.--On the other hand there is no change in the situation of things. They are ever living in a disorganized community, under an impracticable constitution, the passions which sap public order being only the more stimulated by the semblance of fraternity under which they seemed to be allayed. Men cannot be persuaded with impunity that the millennium has come, for they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea.