simple and better adapted to his inexperience, it is the only one he can
comprehend and manage off-hand. Hence it is that young men on leaving
college, especially those who have their way to make in the world, are
more or less Jacobin,--it is a disorder of growing up.[1109]--In well
organized communities this ailment is beneficial, and soon cured.
The public establishment being substantial and carefully guarded,
malcontents soon discover that they have not enough strength to pull it
down, and that on contending with its guardians they gain nothing but
blows. After some grumbling, they too enter at one or the other of its
doors, find a place for themselves, and enjoy its advantages or become
reconciled to their lot. Finally, either through imitation, or habit,
or calculation, they willingly form part of that garrison which, in
protecting public interests, protects their own private interests
as well. Generally, after ten years have gone by, the young man has
obtained his rank in the file, where he advances step by step in his own
compartment, which he no longer thinks of tearing to pieces, and under
the eye of a policeman who he no longer thinks of condemning. He even
sometimes thinks that policeman and compartment are useful to him.
Should he consider the millions of individuals who are trying to mount
the social ladder, each striving to get ahead of the other, it may dawn
upon him that the worst of calamities would be a lack of barriers and of
guardians.
Here the worm-eaten barriers have cracked all at once, their easy-going,
timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to take their course.
Society, accordingly, disintegrated and a pell-mell, is turned into
a turbulent, shouting crowd, each pushing and being pushed, all alike
over-excited and congratulating each other on having finally obtained
elbow-room, and all demanding the new barriers shall be as fragile and
the new guardians as feeble, as defenseless, and as inert as possible.
This is what has been done. As a natural consequence, those who were
foremost in the rank have been relegated to the last; many have been
struck down in the fray, while in this permanent state of disorder,
which goes under the name of lasting order, elegant footwear continue
to be stamped upon by hobnailed boots and wooden shoes.--The fanatic and
the intemperate egoists can now let themselves go. They are no longer
subject to any ancient institutions, nor any armed might which can
restrain them. On the contrary, the new constitution, through its
theoretical declarations and the practical application of these, invites
them to let themselves go.--For, on the one hand, legally, it declares
to be based upon pure reason, beginning with a long string of abstract
dogmas from which its positive prescriptions are assumed to be
rigorously deduced. As a consequence all laws are submitted to the
shallow comments of reasoners and quibblers who will both interpret and
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