Flaubert tries to justify his instinctive antipathy to the idea of brotherhood by the assertion that this idea is always found to be in irreconcilable contradiction to the principle of equity. "I hate democracy (in the sense at least in which the word is accepted in France), that is to say the magnifying of grace to the detriment of justice, the negation of right--in a word, the anti-social principle (_l'anti-sociabilite_)." "The gift of grace (within the province of theology) is the negation of justice; what right has a man to demand any change in the execution of the law?" Yet he hardly believes in this principle himself, and only enunciates it in order to have an argument with which to refute the idea of brotherhood. At least this is what he says, in a moment of complete frankness, in a letter to an old friend: "Human justice seems to me the most unstable thing in the whole world. The sight of a man daring to judge his neighbour would send me into convulsions of laughter if it did not arouse my disgust and pity, and if I were not at the present moment" (he was at that time engaged in studying for the law) "obliged to study a system of absurdities, by virtue of which men consider that they acquire the right to judge. I know of nothing so absurd as law, except, perhaps, the study of it." In another letter he confesses that he never could understand the abstract and dry conception of duty, and that "it did not seem to him to be inherent in the nature of mankind (_il ne me parait pas inherent aux entrailles humaines_)." Evidently, then he believes as little in the idea of justice as he does in that of fraternity. As a matter of fact, he has no moral ideal. "There is only one thing in the world that I really value, and that is beautiful verse; an elegant, harmonious, melodious style; the warmth of the sun; a picturesque landscape; moonlight nights; antique statues, and the character in a profile.... I am a fatalist, in fact, like a Mahometan, and I believe that all that we do for the progress of humanity is of no use. As to this idea of progress, I am mentally incapable of grasping such nebulous and dreary conceptions. All the nonsense talked on this subject simply bores me beyond endurance.... I cherish a deep respect for the ancient form of tyranny, for to me it is the finest expression of humanity that has ever been made manifest." "I have few convictions," he writes to Georges Sand, "but one of those I have I cherish firmly--it is the conviction that the masses are always composed of idiots. And yet one may not consider the masses as stupid, because within them is concealed the seed of an incalculable fecundity (_d'une fecondite incalculable_)."