. Whatever relates to a province or to the rural districts, to
the bourgeoisie or to the shop,[3236] to the army or to a soldier, to
the clergy or to convents, to justice or to the police, to business or
to housekeeping remains vaguely in my mind or is falsified; to clear
up any point I am obliged to recur to that marvelous Voltaire who, on
laying aside the great classic coat, finds plenty of elbow room
and tells all. On the organs of society of vital importance, on the
practices and regulations that provoke revolutions, on feudal rights and
seigniorial justice, on the mode of recruiting and governing monastic
bodies, on the revenue measures of the provinces, of corporations and of
trade-unions, on the tithes and the corvees,[3237] literature provides
me with scarcely any information. Drawing-rooms and men of letters are
apparently its sole material. The rest is null and void. Outside
the good society that is able to converse France appears perfectly
empty.--On the approach of the Revolution the elimination increases.
Look through the harangues of the clubs and of the tribune, through
reports, legislative bills and pamphlets, and through the mass of
writings prompted by passing and exciting events; in none of them do we
see any sign of the human creature as we see him in the fields and
in the street; he is always regarded as a simple robot, a well
known mechanism. Among writers he was a moment ago a dispenser of
commonplaces, among politicians he is now a pliable voter; touch him in
the proper place and he responds in the desired manner. Facts are never
apparent; only abstractions, long arrays of sentences on nature,
Reason, and the people, on tyrants and liberty, like inflated balloons,
uselessly conflicting with each other in space. Were we not aware that
all this would terminate in terrible practical effects then we could
regard it as competition in logic, as school exercises, academic
parades, or ideological compositions. It is, in fact, Ideology, the last
product of the century, which will stamp the classic spirit with its
final formula and last word.

III. The Mathematical Method.

The philosophic method in conformity with the Classic Sprit.
--Ideology.--Abuse of the mathematical process.--Condillac,
Rousseau, Mably, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyes, Cabanis, and de
Tracy.--Excesses of simplification and boldness of
organization.

The natural process of the classic spirit is to pursue in