in
the chaos of tribes and crumbling societies, some man has arisen who,
through his ascendancy, rallies around him a loyal band, driving
out intruders, overcoming brigands, re-establishing order, reviving
agriculture, founding a patrimony, and transmitting as property to
his descendants his office of hereditary justiciary and born general.
Through this permanent delegation a great public office is removed from
competition, fixed in one family, sequestered in safe hands; thenceforth
the nation possesses a vital center and each right obtains a visible
protector. If the sovereign confines himself to his traditional
responsibilities, is restrained in despotic tendencies, and avoids
falling into egoism, he provides the country with the best government
of which the world has any knowledge. Not alone is it the most stable,
capable of continuation, and the most suitable for maintaining together
a body of 20 or 30 million people, but again one of the most noble
because devotion dignifies both command and obedience and, through the
prolongation of military tradition, fidelity and honor, from grade
to grade, attaches the leader to his duty and the soldier to his
commander.--Such are the strikingly valid claims of social traditions
which we may, similar to an instinct, consider as being a blind form of
reason. That which makes it fully legitimate is that reason herself,
to become efficient, is obliged to borrow its form. A doctrine becomes
inspiring only through a blind medium. To become of practical use,
to take upon itself the government of souls, to be transformed into a
spring of action, it must be deposited in minds given up to systematic
belief, of fixed habits, of established tendencies, of domestic
traditions and prejudice, and that it, from the agitated heights of the
intellect, descends into and become amalgamated with the passive forces
of the will; then only does it form a part of the character and become
a social force. At the same time, however, it ceases to be critical and
clairvoyant; it no longer tolerates doubt and contradiction, nor admits
further restrictions or nice distinctions; it is either no longer
cognizant of, or badly appreciates, its own evidences. We of the present
day believe in infinite progress about the same as people once believed
in original sin; we still receive ready-made opinions from above, the
Academy of Sciences occupying in many respects the place of the ancient
councils. Except with a fe